Page 27 of Try As I Smite
“This is not good,” Delilah whispered as she inched closer to him. A rare display of apprehension?
“How?”
“I think he’s actually here with us,” she whispered.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
The demon suddenly smiled, razor-sharp teeth on display. “Are you sure?” it asked.
Fuck. Visions weren’t supposed to respond to them, were they? Maybe they were doing that “in body” thing again?
Black eyes glinted in the lamplight. “I must thank Semhazah for this,” the demon murmured. Almost conversationally. “It took a little work, but trapping you without the ability to fight me was just the opportunity I’ve been looking for.”
It looked at him as it said the last.
Alasdair flung his arms wide, palms spread, willing his power to manifest, ready to hurl a lightning bolt at the thing. Only…nothing came.
Not a spark or a fizz. Impotence wasn’t a feeling he’d ever had to deal with before this disaster of a day. Not even the night he’d had to kill his father.
The demon’s smile echoed the seven hells, terrifying and fascinating at the same time.
All the thing needed to do was touch one of them and it could seize their body…but also control their gifts, once released to the real world. Exactly why anyone with magical powers kept up wards to prevent possession. But without his magic, he was vulnerable.
So was Delilah.
The gut-level instinct to protect had him stepping in front of her, shielding her with his body. Almost as though that move pulled the trigger on a gun, the demon surged across the room. Powerful as fuck and coming right at him. Alasdair braced himself one second, only to have Delilah shove him hard the next. Not expecting the attack from behind, he stumbled to the side and she jumped between him and the demon.
“No!” he shouted, reaching out. A useless gesture.
The fear—not for himself, but for her—that slammed through him came with a labyrinth of rage and shock that this thing dared to threaten her. That he could do nothing to stop it. Nothing to protect her in this moment. That he might have to kill her, too, if it took hold of her.
The demon clamped a hand around her arm and Alasdair expected screaming, or sizzling, or for the thing to turn into black smoke and enter her body through her nostrils. Or something. He’d never witnessed a possession as it happened. Not even his father’s.
But, like with his powers a second ago, nothing happened.
The demon frowned, adjusted its grip, confusion rippling across its features. “What are you?” it hissed at Delilah.
“I—”
Its eyes grew wider, and somehow, impossibly blacker. “I know you. You’re the woman who killed my windigo.”
“Let go of her, Belial,” a female voice sounded from behind it.
Hazah was here? She knew this demon?
Her colorful caftan flowed out behind her as though wind whipped around her despite being indoors. She stared down the creature still latched onto Delilah, who stood eerily still, never removing her gaze from the thing. Hazah, meanwhile, seemed to morph before his eyes. No longer the siren of a woman he’d met earlier today. This was a warrior—fierce, deadly, and pissed. Anger crackled in the air around her.
Heels and all, Delilah took the demon by surprise with a cartwheeling maneuver that both broke the demon’s grip on her and hurtled her to the other side of the room near where Alasdair stood.
The demon sneered but kept its focus on Hazah. “You have nothing to do with this, Semhazah. You already have a body, and I have orders.”
Orders? Body?
Hazah’s eyes shifted subtly, turning inky black, just like the demon. Just like Agnes’s demon eyes in his office.
A demon?
“No fucking way.” The words burst from him.
