Page 39 of Try As I Smite
She shook her head. Whatever happened next, she couldn’t let the future she’d seen come to pass. There would be nothing left for her if it did. “No. We do this together.”
Already, the healing her father had wrought was replaced by a clamping heat. Air hissed through her nose as she sucked in.
Alasdair opened his mouth and then jerked, eyes going wide. Darkness bubbled up from the ground beneath his feet. Smoky shadows rising up—a legion of demons swarming their way from the pits of hell. Several mages tried to defend themselves, spells lighting up the darkness in bursts of color, and flame, and ice, and more. But it happened too fast. The shadows found bodies and filled them up.
Alasdair included.
In front of her, darkness took over the man she’d sworn to fight beside tonight, seeping in through his nose and eyes and mouth. So fast. Too fast.
His gaze darted to her, face contorting grotesquely. “Run,” he mouthed. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, the sockets turning inky black, and the sigil on his forehead started to glow.
No. Gods no.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. A quick glance around showed every witch and warlock in sight going through the same transition. The same possession. Leaving her utterly alone.
Despair slammed through her like a spear to the heart. But she didn’t have time. No way could she extract every demon with the same spell she’d just used. Only one option entered her mind.
“I’m not running, Alasdair Blakesley. I love you too much.”
Burying her fear in the deepest recess of herself, she whispered a word, manifesting a dagger formed of light and energy in her hand, then grabbed Alasdair’s wrist and slit open his veins before doing the same to herself, only to have to bend to the side and vomit at the pain. But she held onto him and, as soon as she took a breath, mashed their wounds together, mingling their blood, binding her soul to his. Magic as ancient as creation itself. Nothing would separate them after this.
If he died, she died. If he fell, she fell.
It was also a desperate attempt to fill him with demon blood, making him impervious to the creature trying to take over his body. The shadow sort of stopped moving, as though someone had hit a pause button, as though it had hit a wall inside him.
Please. Please. Please.
The horrible agony around her wrists disappeared suddenly, the angry red welts dissolving. As though Alasdair’s blood and magic had done the inconceivable, had broken her binding. Was it even possible?
Relief punched through her. It had to be working. It had to be.
She watched Alasdair’s face closely as the pulse of blood flooded between them in rapid, surging spurts. Black eyes, pits of unfathomable darkness, stared into hers. And then he—or the demon inside him—smiled and the glowing run on his skin pulsed, like a taunt. The man before her wasn’t Alasdair…he was Belial in possession of Alasdair’s body. She could see the damn sentinel in the darkness of those eyes.
“Now part of you is human,” Belial said in a terrifying version of Alasdair’s voice.
More smoke rose from the ground. It swirled, creeping up her skin, and a chill overtook her sending a shiver wracking through her as a different demon entered Delilah’s own body. Almost like everything she was had been shoved to the back of a pitch-black ice cave, so cold it burned.
I can’t let them take either of us. She and Alasdair were both too powerful to be captured and used by demons.
With the last of her conscious will, pushing from that blackness to control her limbs, Delilah lifted her dagger to her throat. After all, if she died, they both died.
…
Was this how his father had felt the night Alasdair had had to kill him? As though his very soul was being buried deep. In the darkest, coldest recesses of himself. Except he could still hear and see what was going on, what was happening. Watch as the dark smoke of a demon infiltrated Delilah’s body. Watch the despair wash over her features. The terrible decision she made as she raised the sharp blade to her throat.
“No!” he shouted, the word echoing inside him, bouncing off the walls of his insides.
In that moment, everything about his life, about the past that Hazah’s spell had shown him, coalesced. Before, he could see only the individual threads, but now he had a broader view and could see the entire tapestry. Delilah didn’t need to tell him. She’d come tonight because the future that her mother showed her was worse. That meant worse without her here.
He’d assumed that also meant Delilah was the key to victory. After all, she’d sent all those demons possessing the Syndicate members back to hell, giving his people a fighting chance.
But that wasn’t what the visions had been showing them. Alone, they’d had no choice in the most important events in their lives. But the fates had brought them together, thanks to Rowan. The windigo. They’d defeated it—
“Together.” His whisper swirled around him, casting out the chill invading him.
Before he could do anything, though, he had to wrest back control of his body. Battle for his very soul.
Belial—even in here he recognized the demon—felt as though his insides were coated in tar, sticky and scorching.
