The Witch's Want Ch. 02

He shook his head, staring just a little at her body inside her open cloak, "No. There is no one who needs me."

She felt her heart in her throat then, but she closed the distance to put her hand on his shoulder. "I have never worshiped so much as I have since we met, demon. I suppose that I can pray inside my home for the time that you are gone. I feel a little silly to say it, but I now feel much better if you are near me here."

She tried to stand on her toes then, but she leaned past her balance point and found herself against his hard chest with a gasp that came from them both as his arms closed around her gently. She looked up and kissed him once softly. He returned it, and the next while was spent as both of them drifted in each other's sighs.

She stepped back finally with a bit of effort, "If you are charming me, demon, I admit to you that it is working so well that I feel nothing of the enchantment."

He shook his head, "Other than the force of my will – and I do not use it here – there is no enchantment on you from me. I could say the same words as you."

She nodded and smiled softly, "Then I guess that we charm each other somehow. I will wait for you, and I have some things to decide."

"What do you have to decide, witch?"

She looked down, troubled for a second, "I need to decide how much I am willing to hear your offer to me."

He looked confused, "Offer? What do you mean?"

"It's a fear that I feel," she said, "I've been able to push aside any fear that I had of you but one. I am afraid to go much farther in this because I have read that a demon always makes an offer. It might be covered in gold or honey, but there is always a price. I have felt a longing for your touch from the first night that we talked, and it has done nothing but grow stronger. I find that you are in my thoughts the whole day and night. I care for you, demon, but ..."

She reached to touch his face. "I fear to lose my soul."

He held her to him then, knowing the why of her hesitation at last.

"Listen, witch. Your soul does not hang in any balance that I know of. I do not try to charm you or enslave you. I want your will to remain your own. I came to you because I was drawn as I said, and then out of my want for your friendship, and I feel that I have some small measure of that."

He sighed, "I know what I look like, and you may not wish to believe me, but I cannot say in truth that I am what you call me for I do not know this myself. But I have no wish for anything between us to cost you your soul. I do not even know how it might be done."

He looked down then, searching for words. He saw the sign of his own arousal. "I wish to thank you," he said, looking at the dirt, "for your touch and the feel of you against me. It makes me feel what I was once, and am again. You can't know how much it's worth to me."

"Then show me your body," she said, "so that I might know that you are honest and not some beast. Show me all of you so that you can hide nothing from this witch-girl here, as you have seen some of me and, ..."

She faltered then, but only for a moment as she looked him in the eye. "Let me hold you. Then tell me your name after that," she said, "for I have heard that a demon will not tell a true name unless forced. I don't know about much of this, but I believe now that you wouldn't hurt me."

He looked at her and tilted his head, looking at her with those dark eyes, "Why? Why do you do this now, when I could talk until I had no breath before and you couldn't believe me?"

She looked at the place where his collarbones came together, "That was before," she said.

"I've always had reasons not to trust anyone outside my small group of friends." She looked up at him, "But you have to trust somebody sometime, or you become smaller as a person, living inside your own walls. I don't understand a lot of things about you, but I think that I can trust that you don't have any horrible intent now and I think that from what you said, that you have no friends and don't really know anyone. I've been there before, so I guess that I can find something in me for a confused man or demon or whatever you are. I don't feel anything bad about you and I think that if you meant to harm me, you'd have done it before this."

She drew a breath and let it out. "So, if you really aren't a demon, then show me what you look like and let me feel your heart so I'll know for myself."

He smiled a bit shyly, and for someone like him it looked a little out of place for a second, but the Wiccan thought it looked very sweet on his face.

"You will not have to force me." He turned his hand and stood naked with her as he reached into her robe and ran his hands along her back. The Wiccan shuddered and sighed, fighting herself until she reached to hold herself against him.

"You feel so ... good," she sighed, laying her head against his chest to listen for a moment. Satisfied that she was listening to a man's heart, she smiled up at him.

"Tell me then. If you aren't a demon, then tell me who you are, or were, at least. I'll try to learn what I can of you. If you have a name now that's what you go by, save it for when you return, and I'll give you my own name then."

He kissed her forehead then and bowed his head for a moment. "I will give you what I remember, so listen well, witch-friend. I am not now who or what I once was, and much of this is muddy in my own memory. Some of what I have to tell you is not as your history tells of it, written as it was by hopeful scratchers in the dust of my lands."

"I am from a land called Sumer. My people are known to you as Sumerians. My father was Lugalbanda, second king of Uruk. He was a soldier once in the army of Enmerkar, the first king of Uruk. It is written in texts left by my brother that our father's consort was the goddess Ninsun. But it was told to be written thusly to make us seem to have been birthed by gods. It was written after my death, or I would have flayed my brother's skin off him myself over the insult to our lovely mother."

"Our mother was Nisi-ini-su, the high eresh-dingir priestess, proud and powerful daughter of Sin-kashid. She was beautiful to all. Beautiful she was, but neither of my parents were of the gods. I was first born and rose to be the youngest and most successful general in their armies. I conquered many lands in their names and razed the great city of Lagash to the ground."

I am called by many names, two of them true and all the rest false, and I am said to be a king, though I never was. One name is new to me and the other is very old. I died at the hands of a sorcerer and necromancer on the field of battle against the Gutian nation. My name is Ur-Nammu."

She felt his hands stroking her skin in the moment of silence while he thought, "I was dead, it is true, but I am dead no longer. By blind luck and chance, I found a dying body. As the spirit left it, I tried for the only chance that I saw for myself in so many thousands of years. I learned much of the lore of my sweet mother's cult - the eresh-dingir, and I have my own power which has only grown stronger. By my will, the body lived until the healers helped me. Now I live again here, with the gift of this chance and this life."

"But I must now live as a man in this age. I know a lot from the memories of the man, but I still have much to learn. I am no general anymore. I am no demon, at least I think not, though I like the way that you make it sound when you say it to me. I don't even know what I really am - but I promise you that I will not harm you. I have been living in a sort of game until now, pretending to know the ones that the man knew. Now with you, I have found one who I can know for myself and not need to search for what the man knew of himself and how he related to others - that is, if you would allow it from your side of this."

He kissed the side of her throat and it made her whimper and press her face against his neck to breathe in his scent.

"What is, ... what is , ... what I smell on you? You smell so good."

He shrugged a little, "my memory of the spiced oils that I always bathed in. I have found nothing like them here, but when I am like this, I remember them. I don't even mean to do it."

"Now, can you remember my name, witch?"

He felt her nod, "Yes," she sighed, "Ur-Nammu. I'll try to find out what I can."

"Have a care what you believe," he said, "most of it is false or just wrong. Ur-Nammu the builder, they called me." He remembered something else a little sadly, "And Ur-Nammu, ... The Destroyer, as well, though likely not together in the same breath."

He released her then, "I will come to you when I can and we can talk further. But for now, I can say that I do not know what I am, though I live, obviously. I will tell more of me then if you like."

She felt a small whine of complaint in her throat when he pulled away, but she thought that she could understand it. If he felt only half of what she did, it was likely all that he could do to step back, and now was plainly not the time for this between them.

Though she really ached for it to be.

She looked at him, her view sliding down the power that his body spoke of to her own until her gaze stopped at the part of him that lit the hunger that she hadn't felt in quite a while and she knew.

He really ached for it to be the time for this too.

"So," she said as she forced her gaze higher,"are you saying that you are the reincarnation of Ur-Nammu?"

He knew the word, or at least his mind knew it. He shook his head. "If I understand it, you ask if I am a person born now believing that I am someone from the past? No. I was not born into this body. I took it just as it died without an owner."

"I am Ur-Nammu, son of the fighter and the priestess, and I live now in another body. This is how I looked then but for my eyes. What you see here is what the sorcerer gave to me. These marks are what I did, told in the lines on me. I can tell you all of this, but I have no time or trust in myself, this night so close to you, witch. Learn what you can, I will tell more, and it is for you to decide what you want then."

He stepped forward and kissed her softly. "Remember also, witch-friend, that I make no offers here. If you wish later, we might make offers to each other in a quiet moment, but I have no need or want to rob you of anything, much less your soul."

"Kiss me, beautiful witch. Give me something to think of while I must be away doing things which I now do not want to do."

She kissed him then for long minutes before she pulled back reluctantly.

"You should know," he said, "since we seem to draw together here, the worst side of me. There is no danger to you since it is from my memory, but I what I showed that night to those men and to you was me as I looked while I ruined a city that sent killers for ones that I cared for in their hate of me."

"You should know, so that anything else will seem warmer now that you have seen the worst way that I ever looked on the day that earned me the title of Destroyer for we slew thousands of soldiers along with all of the priests and advisers and their king for what had been attempted before I rebuilt that place for the ones who were left. After that, no one tried to harm any that I loved again."

"Would you show that to me again, Ur-Nammu? I didn't get much of a chance to really see you then. I don't think I'd like to see the blood and gore again, but I think I'd like to see what somebody like you looks like if you did that to protect someone."

In the blink of an eye, she saw that his face was human, proud and cold. He was clothed in armor again, though it was clean and there was no blood on him or broken arrows. He held no dripping sword. He only smiled after a second.

The next time that she blinked, he was in his track pants again and it made her smile since it looked just a little funny.

"And now? What are you now?" she asked with a smile.

He shrugged, "A confused man who can look two ways, and hopes to never look like that again and mean the intent of it." He smiled a little sheepishly, "A man who looks a little different and hides his eyes so that he can go to his job and pay his bills."

"Goodnight, demon," she said softly, "I know a little more now and I'm thankful to you for it, but ... please come back to me soon."

He nodded to her, smiling at the hopeful sound of it. "Seven nights you should worship behind your locked door," he said softly, "Look for me on the eighth. I will come to you then. Sleep well, witch-friend."

He turned to walk off then. The Wiccan wondered about a lot of things and knew that she had even more than this to think about, but she was sure of a few of them even now, she thought.

She was also much less afraid now, though things were still at least a little unclear. She thought back to the men there in the clearing. Things something like that had happened before, but she'd always sensed it and been gone into the shadows in a heartbeat. That time she'd missed picking up on it, and from what she'd read in them, she thought that she ought to be terrified now. But she found that she was only nervous.

She would be more attentive, she decided, and of course, she was not completely defenseless. But she did feel a lot less of the unease that she thought would normally have come to her.

She found that she had quite a bit of feeling for him.

And a lot of it had to do with another thing that she knew was bound to happen.

She watched him as he walked off into the night, and she now had every intention to walk to her house and go to her bed and try hard to lay all of this down for examination in the morning.

And do her very best to keep her hands from her own body. With him in her mind like this, it was just a joke.

She'd already tried this every night.

She failed at it every time.

He walked out to the main road with a small smile on his face, feeling better now that he'd gotten to speak with her. He chuckled a little as he began to run north toward the town. The only dark thoughts that he had was when he thought about the men and what they'd told him when he'd forced them to tell it.

-----------------

As he drove the quiet night time streets in his cruiser the next night, Bart noted that he hadn't had a break in a few hours and headed for the local donut shop.

Mindful of the stereotypical way that some citizens tend to look at a police officer in a cruiser parked at a donut shop, he only stayed long enough to buy his coffee before driving on. The staff always tried to load him up with their pastry, but he always declined as politely as he could. He never told them that he hated the stuff, and would rather find a place to pull over on a street in the middle of the village to drink his coffee.

As he rolled down one of the main streets, his attention was drawn to the storefronts. Like a lot of little places, the merchants here fought a hard fight, trying to keep the inhabitants from going to the nearest 'Superstore' for their needs, trying just to stay alive. As he chewed on the vagarities of local enterprise, his eye caught the sign for the briefest moment through the passenger window as it slid past. He drove down another block and turned around to come back.

Rolling to a stop across the street, he shut off the ignition and opened his coffee. Making sure that he didn't spill during the always-hazardous first sip, he considered the sign and wondered how he could have worked here for the past month and not seen the New Age bookstore in the middle of town. He shook his head with a rueful smile. Brilliant police work.

His eyes swept the line of stores. Most had one light on so that the interior could be seen into by a passing cop. The bookstore had one on too, but it was fairly dim and far back from the window. He was just thinking on how it managed to look quaint and a touch Victorian without falling too deeply into junky and run-down when he noticed the shadows of the pair of people inside. The door opened, and an elderly man exited the place, walking quickly to a pickup truck to drive off. Bart waited and slurped his coffee.

A few minutes later the door opened again and a woman stepped out. She looked up and down the street and then turned to lock the door. In the quarter of a second when her face showed her profile, he recognized her. He set his cup into the cupholder and tried not to stare, since she'd likely feel his gaze. He felt a little thrill that she might recognize him, but knew that it likely wouldn't do them both any good here.

Tonight, she was dressed in a peasant blouse over a pair of jeans and walked in sneakers which reminded him of old running shoe commercials from his body's childhood. She stepped down the two steps onto the sidewalk and with a glance over her shoulder, she nodded politely without looking too hard at what to her was one of the town deputies. Bart lifted his hand from where it was on the top edge of the door to return a wave that he hoped would appear to be half-interested.

Where he was parked, the glare from the light standard behind him would make it about impossible to see his face and anyway, it was about showing the flag right then, letting the people know that there was a cop around, tax dollars at work and all that.

Then she was around the corner and gone. Bart took another sip, but put the cup down again when an old car backed out of the alley and headed off down the street, trailing a cloud of smoke.

He waited until it had turned the corner down the block before he started the cruiser. He counted to ten slowly and then pulled away from the curb to follow. It wasn't hard, hers was the only car leaving a noxious cloud behind it. Bart tried not to think about that. He decided to call it just the only car on the road ahead.

He briefly considered running the plate, but he had no reason to, and under these circumstances, it would have been invasive. Besides, he smirked, to see the plate clearly, he'd have to get a lot closer than his nose would prefer, given what was coming out of the tailpipe. She turned out of town and Bart was not surprised when she turned in at the driveway of the nearest house to the cemetery - the only house near the cemetery, for that matter. He drove on past, turning around in the cemetery driveway to shut the car off.

He got out of the cruiser and lit a cigarette out of consideration for the non-smokers who had to use this cruiser on the opposite shift. He wasn't thinking about much. A brief memory of her in the open cloak lit by the fire came to him and then mostly he was remembering how her soft laughter had drifted to him that evening from among the headstones. Before he could stop himself, he remembered the feel of her skin under his hands as he'd stroked her back.

In his previous life, he could - and did - have just about any woman he'd wanted at any given moment. After so long as nothing more than his disembodied spirit and will, he wasn't the same man in that regard anymore. He chuckled quietly as he reminded himself that he really wasn't the same man in any event.

The general he'd been long ago had been in love before, but not anything like this might promise - if it actually happened. If anything came of this, he hoped that it might be the kind of thing that he could lose himself in, because that had never happened to him before and that was what he felt here. Bart hadn't thought of it, but now he wondered what he might have been able to expect from anybody else in this time and place.

The witch could see him as he was - if she was close enough - and she had seen him. It amazed him to no end that she obviously liked him anyway. He said a quiet prayer of hope and thanks to the gods which he knew for the gift of this life and his good fortune at finding this witch. The general was going to do it differently this time. If there was a hope here, it wouldn't be women adoring him for who he was and him in the middle of the pile trying to decide. He only wanted one woman to hopefully adore him a little, he wanted the chance to love his own priestess.