Blood of the Sorceress

Then he lifted his gaze to meet his own eyes in the mirror, and it startled him, the intensity, the depth of them. Dark brown, his eyes, revealing turmoil and pain. A pain he recognized but didn’t remember. Startling, to look into his own eyes for the first time. It felt as if a complete stranger was looking back at him and, more, looking for something within him.

Eventually he dragged his gaze away from his reflection and realized there was a shower stall standing nearby. He knew what it was, how to use it, and he didn’t particularly care enough to worry whether the home’s owners would return before he finished. He needed to get warm.

Reaching into the stall, he adjusted the water flow until it was as hot as he could stand it, and then he stepped in and let the heat soak into his cold new body. It felt good. Not as good as it had seemed when he’d seen others stand beneath the spray, heads tipped back, eyes closed in pleasure. But it was good compared to freezing, and it was warming him up quickly. He stayed until the water ran cool, then toweled off and returned to the bedroom to dress himself in another man’s clothes: heavy jeans and a T-shirt, with a flannel shirt over that, woolly socks and a pair of running shoes that fit almost perfectly. Luck was with him. Or fate. Maybe the Universe thought he needed a break after what he’d been through.

Dressed, he went down to the kitchen, food being next on his list of priorities, and he ended up wolfing the leftovers he found in the refrigerator. Half a baked chicken, a bowl of chocolate pudding, a partial head of lettuce, browning at the cut edges. He tried one thing after another, but he didn’t find the pleasure he was looking for from the food. Why did people make such a big fuss? Aside from the consistency, one thing tasted much like another.

How disappointing.

After the food, he rummaged around the house a bit more, taking the money he found in the cookie jar, all of $85, and a bus ticket that was tacked to a cork-board in the kitchen. It was marked “Port Authority, New York, NY.”

When her beloved found the empty house, Lilia was delighted and relieved. When he took the money and found the bus ticket, she was horrified. Not only had he stolen, but he was going to New York? No! He needed to stay in upstate Milbury, near her sisters, so they could help him, keep him safe until she could take physical form and protect him herself.

And then he was off on foot again, but warm, wearing his pilfered clothing and a coat he’d added to the collection. Soon a passing car slowed down to offer him a ride, and he was on his way to the bus station.

“Why?” she cried at the Universe. “Why are you letting this happen?”

But as usual, the Universe remained silent on the subject.

1

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.