Blood of the Sorceress. Maggie Shayne

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      “Do it again, boss. Visualize the shit outta that dream life you were talking about before. And make damn sure I’m in it, too!”

      “But—”

      “Wait, wait, wait, let me help get’cha started.” Gus had lost his fear of the apparently enchanted weapon and moved up close, standing shoulder to shoulder with Demetrius, who thought Gus must have been an impressive man once. They were close to the same height, and there were traces of what must have been an almost regal bone structure in Gus’s face. Every once in a while, when Demetrius looked at him, he saw someone else in the old man’s eyes. Someone vaguely familiar.

      “See it with me now,” Gus was saying. “See it real clear in your mind. Playboy Mansion. Big gorgeous house. And good old Gus is the head of security, D-dog’s right-hand man. He’s wearing fine clothes, shiny shoes, a nice suit. Catalogue nice. Gus decides who gets in and who has to stay the hell out.” He pounded his chest with a fist. “I’ll protect you from the swarms who’d take advantage of a guy like you, bein’ new here and all. Shoot, I know how. I was a soldier once.”

      That brought Demetrius right out of his vision. “You were?”

      “Shh. Not now, Dog. We got visualizing to do. Now see it, damn you. See it. See the pool? It’s bluer than blue, crystalline water sparkling in the sunshine. It’s warm all the time. Like summer, year-round.”

      Demetrius nodded, wanting to examine the knife but resigned to shutting Gus up first. “All right, all right. I see the pool. It’s kidney-shaped. And there’s a waterfall off to one side, natural-looking, with stones all piled up.” He really was seeing it—and enjoying the vision playing out in his mind, though he would rather be shot than admit that to Gus. “And off to the side, just above it, there’s a bubbling spa tub that looks like a pond and spills over to feed the waterfall.”

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