“He must have rigged the door to trap us in here.” He continued yanking vainly on it.
Lena backed away, then spotted the book he’d dropped and she grabbed it. Something told her it might be important.
“The amulet, Demetrius. Use it.”
He nodded, straightened and focused intently on the trapdoor. Then he suddenly thrust one fist at the door and it exploded, letting the smoke come rushing in at them.
“Grab the blanket!” he shouted.
She did, holding it around her mouth and nose as they scrambled down the spiral stairs. Demetrius ran to the door that led down to the second floor and pulled it open, only to see a wall of red-orange flames licking at the ceiling. It had happened so fast!
He slammed the door closed again. “He must have set the place on fire before he left,” he said. “Sid and Gus—” He was choking on the smoke and couldn’t finish the sentence.
Lilia ran to the far end of his bedroom to open the French doors. Stumbling onto the balcony, she sucked in great greedy gulps of air and wiped the tears from her stinging eyes.
Demetrius was beside her a moment later, pulling the doors closed behind him. They both leaned over the railing, looking down at the beautiful mansion. Flames were leaping from an alarming number of windows.
“We’re going to have to jump,” he said.
“What about the stairway to your private garden?”
“The smoke would get us before we got that far. And we could burn to ashes before we revived.”
“If our bodies are destroyed, it’s over. We won’t come back from that,” she told him.
He looked back into the increasingly smoke-filled bedroom. “I’ve got to get the chalice and the blade from the safe.”
“Don’t be insane! You’ll be killed!”
“At the moment, I’m still immortal,” he reminded her. “I know I can make it. We might need those tools, Lilia. We have no idea what Sindar’s intentions are.”
He clasped her shoulders, kissed her forehead. “Don’t wait for me if it gets too—”
“Just go!”
Nodding, he flung open the doors and ran into the smoke. Lilia didn’t close them behind him. She stood trying to peer through the smoke to see him, the blanket over her face, coughing now and then. Moments ticked past, then still more.
“Demetrius?” she called. “Demetrius, are you—”
He emerged from the smoke so suddenly that she jumped backward, and then he was with her once more, shutting the doors and trapping the smoke inside. He had a small leather satchel in one hand, presumably with the chalice and the dagger inside, and his cell phone in the other.
Holding the phone out to her, coughing so hard he could barely speak, he managed, “Sid. Gus.”
“Nine-one-one first?”
“No, the security system will already have notified them.”
Nodding, and moving to the edge of the balcony, she quickly scrolled to his phone book, cursing her slow fingers but finally hitting the entry marked Sid.
It rang and rang.
She switched to the entry for Gus, praying, while Demetrius took out the blade and strapped its hand-tooled leather sheath and belt around his waist. Neither of them took their eyes from the closed glass doors for long. The room beyond them was black with smoke by now.
Demetrius took the old book from her and added it to the satchel. Then held out his hand. “Give me the phone. We have to go.”
“Just one more minute.”
Gus’s phone rang endlessly. She shook her head. “Gus, please... Answer, dammit.”
His face was grim. “We can’t get to them from here. The stairway’s engulfed.” Then he took the phone from her hand and put it into the satchel, buckled it up and tossed it over the railing.
Lilia watched it fall into the hedges near the house.
“Jump out as far as you can, aim for the pool,” he told her.
She stared down. Three stories, and the pool was far too shallow. She would recover, but it was going to hurt like hell.
“Come on, we don’t have a choice.”
She looked down at the dizzying distance and stepped backward. She’d had no fear up on Bell Rock. But she hadn’t been about to jump off it, either. Her history with falling from high places was not good. “I...I can’t.”
“We have to save Sid and Gus. Go.”
She nodded and, bracing one hand on his shoulder, got up on the railing. Then, with a deep breath and a silent prayer, she jumped. She screamed all the way down—a distance that took about three seconds to descend—and hit the water feetfirst, shooting like a missile all the way to the bottom. Her feet hit, her knees bent, and she absorbed the impact. It was just that easy. It didn’t even hurt all that much. She pushed herself toward the surface and emerged spluttering. Demetrius was already splashing down into the pool beside her. Then he surfaced, shook the water from his head and looked at her. “You okay?”
“Yes. Fine. You?” She pushed her wet hair back from her face.
“I’m fine, too.” Then he looked back at the house, and his eyes went frantic. They swam to the edge. He climbed out, then reached down to pull her up beside him, grabbed her arm and drew her away from the heat. A window exploded, and flames licked out the opening.
He pointed. “Get the satchel. See it there? In the bushes? Get it, and then go open the gate. Do it fast. Don’t wait for me.”
“Demetrius—”
He strode back toward the house, and she went after him and gripped his shoulder. “It’s possible you might have accepted the final piece of your soul already and not even be aware of it, because you asked subconsciously, not out loud. And if that happened, then you could be mortal right now and not even know it.”
“Get the satchel and get out of the way, Lilia.”
He pulled free, but she lunged after him again, still trying to stop him.
This time he turned on her fiercely. “Dammit, Gus is my best friend. And Sid’s barely more than a kid.” Angrily, he aimed a forefinger at the satchel in the shrubs near the house and then swung his arm toward her. The satchel launched like a rocket, landing at her feet. He still had powers. He wasn’t mortal, then. She bent automatically, picked up the satchel and held it to her chest. Demetrius was jogging away before she even managed get the strap over her shoulder.
“If your body burns, it’s over, Demetrius! Please!”
He ran right up to the front door, and she knew it had to be searing hot that close to the fire. She could feel the heat from here. Yanking the dagger from its sheath, he blasted the doors open, and then he was gone, vanishing into the flames and smoke.
“Demetrius!” she cried.
Sirens wailed. The gate closed. She had to let the firemen in. They were her love’s best hope now. She carried the satchel to the gate and tucked it behind one of the pillars, out of sight. Then, as the fire trucks rolled nearer, she pressed the keypad and let them in.
The trucks rumbled through, rolling toward the house, and Lilia ran behind them. By the time she caught up, the fire crews were already pouring from their vehicles and swarming over the lawns of the once-beautiful home.
She started toward the house, but three men rushed over to her, the apparent leader clasping her shoulders and shouting questions over the roar of the flames, the whoosh of the hoses, the rumbling motors, and the shouting of the firefighters. The trucks’ flashing lights hurt her eyes.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, no, but—”
“Is anyone inside?”
She nodded. “Three men. One of them is older. Gus. Please, I have to help—”
“We’ve got this, ma’am.” He nodded to one of his subordinates, who took her arm and kept her from running back toward the house as the chief jogged toward the others shouting, “We have three adult males inside! Let’s do this!”
Meanwhile, her captor was tugging her toward an ambulance. “Were you inside?” he was asking. “How did you get all wet?”
She couldn’t drag her eyes from that inferno as the flames grew fiercer, hotter. God, where was Demetrius? Yes, he was immortal, and yes, he would recover from any injuries with rapid speed, but what if his body was destroyed? And what about Gus and Sid? God, had Sindar murdered more innocents today? Had her attempt to reclaim the life he’d stolen from her only brought about more death?
“Ma’am?”
She shook herself. “We were upstairs. We jumped from the balcony into the pool.”
“We?”
“Demetrius and I. He went back inside after Sid and Gus.”
“Did you inhale any smoke, ma’am?” He pressed her to sit on the back edge of the open ambulance.
In seconds an EMT was leaning over her and pressing a stethoscope to her chest. “Take a deep breath for me,” he said, as the firefighter raced back toward the blaze.
“I’m fine.” She pushed his hands away, rising as something moved behind one of the second-floor windows, a shadow in front of the eerie red-orange backlighting. “Is that—”
The shadow smashed through the window, plunging into the hedges and vanishing. But she’d seen enough to know it was Demetrius, with one or maybe both of the other men entangled in his arms.
She lunged forward, but the paramedic blocked her. “Ma’am, you really can’t—”
“You really don’t want to get in between me and the man I love,” she said. Her eyes met his, and she willed him to move. And he did, his face going as blank as a sleepwalker’s.
She raced toward the hedges where firefighters were already pulling the men free. It was hot this close to the fire, so hot it seared her face. Demetrius emerged at last, nearly falling to his knees before she reached him, grabbed him and, pulling his arm around her shoulders, half carried him away from the danger. The firefighters followed with the other men.
When she reached the far side of the pool she eased Demetrius onto the grass and knelt over him, cradling his head in her hands. His face was sooty, his eyes watering as he stared up at her, and then he looked back toward the rescuers who were tending to his friends. She followed that gaze and saw that neither Sid nor Gus were conscious.
“They were trapped in the game room on the second floor,” he said. “They didn’t have a chance. I tried....”
Then his eyes fell closed and there was only the sound of his lungs, wheezing with every breath.
The medics closed in, and Lilia had the presence of mind to slide the blade from its sheath and beneath her skirt, away from prying eyes, before they shoved her out of the way and she lost sight of her love.
11
When Demetrius came around again he was in a hospital bed. He’d been bathed and no longer stank of smoke, and he was wearing a clean blue hospital gown and was resting between crisp white sheets.
As memory returned, his eyes widened and he sat up with a sudden start and a grunt of horror.
Soft hands pressed him gently back onto the mattress. He knew that touch. And the voice that came with it. “It’s all right. It’s over. We’re safe.”
He blinked away the nightmare images of Gus, of Sid, slumping in the corner of the game room, coughing, barely breathing, as he blasted through a wall to get to them. And then so limp, so lifeless, as he’d carried them to the closest window and launched the three of them through it.
“What about the guys?” he asked softly, his eyes searching hers. So blue. So beautiful. So very sad.
“Gus has some burns on his hands and arms, but it was mostly smoke inhalation. But he’s going to be all right.”
He blinked slowly, knowing already that he didn’t want to hear the answer to his next question, yet asking it all the same. “Sid?”
She closed her eyes, but a tear squeezed through anyway. “Sid was gone before you hit the ground. He had an undiagnosed heart condition, they said. The smoke was just too much. They tried to revive him, but—”
“Dammit!” He sat up in bed, and no amount of pressure from those tender hands stopped him this time. “I need clothes.”
“Demetrius, wait.”
“I need my damn clothes. I’m going after that bastard who calls himself a priest, and when I find him—”
“You’ll do what?” she demanded.
He went still, staring into her tear-filled eyes.
“You’ll do what?” she asked again, her voice softer now. “Act like the demon he tried to force you to become?”
He stared at her. She was clean, too, wearing a dress someone must have donated, because it was a size too big and not her usual style, green, with a tank-style top and flared skirt. Flip-flops on her feet.
“It would be poetic, wouldn’t it?” he asked her slowly. “If I murdered that animal because of what he made me?”
“It wouldn’t hurt him a bit, Demetrius. Death is an illusion. No more than a release from the constraints of the physical body. You know there is life beyond it. You know this.”
He sat there with his legs over the side of the bed, feet on the floor, itching to get out of there and wanting to argue with Lilia’s calm logic. But it was true, what she said. It was true, and he knew it.
She was still talking. “If you kill him, all you do is release him into wholeness and oneness and bliss, and he can then process what has happened and perhaps, return a better man. While you? You stain your soul with the mark of murder. What good would killing him do?”
“Maybe keep him from hurting anyone else,” he said. “Maybe avenge that kid who befriended me when I had only one friend in the world. He would have taken a bullet for me, you know.”
“I know.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I know. But Sid is fine, I promise you. He had a few minutes of fear, then he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again it was to a world of beauty and understanding the likes of which he had never even imagined.”
“That’s not what the afterlife was like for me.”
“You were in a realm created by hatred and dark magic. That wasn’t the afterlife. It was something altogether different, completely unnatural. And I think you know that.”
He sighed. “I’m still going after Sindar.”
She nodded. “I know you are. And I’m going with you. Would you like to see Gus first?”
Grunting, he nodded. “If you would please get me some clothes.”
She picked up a plastic bag from the floor. He looked up, sending her a question with his eyes. “The hospital found something for me to wear and provided these for you. Right now these are the only clothes you have.”
Then he lowered his head. “How bad?”
“The house is a total loss. The garage survived, and the limo and the Jeep are all right. But everything else is gone.”
“How long have I been out of it?”
“Three days. You missed the funeral, I’m afraid.”
Heaving a deep breath, he blew it out slowly. “I’m really sorry about that,” he said.
“He knows you are.”
Blinking slowly, Demetrius tried to take stock. His life had turned upside down in the space of an hour, it seemed. “So I’m back where I started. Homeless.”
“Your home,” she whispered, taking his hand and laying it over her heart, “is right here.”
Oddly, he believed her. The feel of her heart beating gently beneath his palm filled him with...something. Something he’d been determined not to feel. Something he knew he could feel a lot more powerfully if his soul were intact.
But if he accepted her offer he would lose his powers. He wouldn’t be able to fight the powerful high priest who’d somehow take up residence in the body of a comatose old man after thousands of years. He could not fight the powerful, maybe immortal, dark magician without his powers. So he couldn’t let Lilia restore the final piece of his soul. Not yet. And if he didn’t succeed in his mission to subdue Sindar in time, maybe never.
And yet Lilia had made a very good point. What good was vengeance going to do any of them?
“We can return to my sister
s,” she said softly. “They’ll give us a place to stay for now. We can be there in time to spend Beltane with them.”
Beltane. The deadline for his decision to be made. One more day, he realized. Nodding slowly, he got to his feet. “I’ll get dressed. Will you let them know I’m discharging myself, get the forms I need to sign so we can get all their arguing over with and be on our way?”
“Of course. I’ve already phoned my sisters—your phone, not mine. Mine burned with the house.”
That reminded him of his magical tools.
“They’re safe,” she said, before he could even speak, and then she nodded toward the chair in the corner, where the satchel sat undisturbed. “The blade, the chalice and even your amulet are in there.”
She’d taken care of his most cherished possessions. She’d made sure he had something to wear. She was trying to take care of him. Had been, he realized, for thirty-five-hundred years. Had anyone ever been that devoted to anyone before?
* * *
Gus lay in his hospital bed looking pale and pain-racked. He wore mittens of gauze and padding that reached to his elbows, and his ankle was in a cast and elevated in a sling. IVs pumped him full of drugs and fluids, but if pain meds were part of the mix, there were clearly not enough of them.
Demetrius sat in the chair beside the bed, feeling for his friend. Hurting for him. And certain his empathy would be far worse if he had an intact soul. Yet another mark on the con side of that decision. “I phoned Ned Nelson before I came in,” he said. “He’s been here, but I was still too out of it to talk then. Anyway, he’s going to have his lawyers handle everything for me.”
“What’s to handle?” Gus asked, searching Demetrius’s face.
“I’m selling enough stock to take care of Sid’s family. It’s the least I can do.”
Gus nodded. “He was a good kid. Damn good kid. Should’ve been me dying in those flames, but I guess I’m...not done yet. There’s still something I need to do.”
“There are a lot of things you still need to do, my friend.” Demetrius moved to pat Gus’s hand, then stopped, because they were so thickly mittened.
“You saved my life,” Gus said softly.
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