Page 40 of Try As I Smite
Rather than struggling to push the creature out, Alasdair drew on his power and yanked at the other being invading his insides and pulled it down deep to where he waited. He closed his eyes as he whispered a spell, and pictured the one place he knew better than any other in the world, the place where he had grown up secure in the loving bosom of his family before demons had ripped them apart.
Their family home by the lake.
He infused his magic into every nook and cranny of the vision so that when he opened his eyes, he stood at one end of the family room, a soft glow of a yule log in the fireplace penetrating the darkness outside the window. The sounds, the smells, the feel of the rooms so real, he almost believed it himself.
At the other end of the room stood Belial in his demon form, the fucker who’d been trying to possess him his entire life.
This is my house, asshole.
The demon glanced around as though shocked to find himself somewhere new. Then his gaze landed on Alasdair and his expression hardened, promising black retribution.
There were only two ways out of this hell of being trapped in his own mind while this demon took possession. Force it out or die. Alasdair had no intention of dying. “Foolish of you to try to take me,” Alasdair taunted.
“More are on their way,” the demon hissed. “Strike me down, and another shall take my place.”
Alasdair’s magic crackled, electric sizzles skating over his skin, standing his hair on end as he gathered more and more inside himself. The demon’s own power oozed through the room, filling the space with the scent of sulfur, making it difficult to breathe.
Without warning, instead of reaching for his most potent ability of electricity, Alasdair spoke the words that would awaken the wards in the house. Wards his father hadn’t had a chance to engage the night he’d died.
Instantly, the cement floor rose up like fists and wrapped around Belial’s feet. At the same time, the tongues of flame from the fireplace reached out and wrapped around the demon’s wrists. But Belial laughed and then disappeared, becoming the black smoke that a physical world could not contain.
The smoke shot forward, coming for Alasdair, who summoned a bubble of glass around himself. The smoke bumped up against his glass container, curling back on itself. Then it coalesced and condensed and the demon solidified and manifested a club—solid black and shiny, like onyx. With one swing, Alasdair’s glass protection shattered.
Needing space for what he’d do next, Alasdair hurled a bolt of lightning so strong, the boom of sound deafened him for a second. The thunderbolt struck Belial in the chest, throwing the demon backward, legs and arms flailing. It slammed into the stone wall, which seemed to reach out and wrap around him, yanking his body into the masonry of the house. This time, Belial uttered a single word—the secret word that turned off the wards in the house, something only Alasdair’s family was supposed to know—and the wall released him. Spat him back out into the room, whole and sneering and smug.
Alasdair scowled, recognizing that the demon, in possession of his body, was using his own powers and knowledge against him. This was getting him nowhere. He couldn’t defeat this thing. Not on his own. Not trapped inside himself like this.
Together.
Delilah was here with him, inside him, in this room with him where she’d asked just today if anyone had thought to give him a hug that horrible night. He could feel her, in his blood, in his soul.
Alasdair knew what he had to do.
A whispered spell and in his hands appeared a relic, a weapon like the rope he’d used on Agnes, that his father had hidden within this house. The very weapon he’d used to help kill his father and the demon inside him as a child. Chains with shackles at the end, ones that had once held a saint in prison. He threw the chains at the demon, another spell shooting them across the room, binding them to Belial’s wrists and ankles and dragging the demon across the room to chain it to the wall.
Immediately, the demon thrashed and screamed in agony, the putrid scent of decay and rot filling the room, but that wasn’t enough. The chains had killed the demon in his father, but Delilah had said Belial was a sentinel. Stronger.
Alasdair closed his eyes and reached out. Reached not for his powers, which the demon had taken equal control of, or the demon’s blood now flowing through his veins. Instead, he reached for the gift her father had given…angel’s blood.
Light filled his vision, and warmth seeped into every pore in his body, as Alasdair started to chant. A simple spell. The words seemed to flow into him, as though guided by an unseen force. The light pulled away from him, coalescing as a ball, floating in front of him, and the demon’s eyes widened. Even in those black pits, fear was visible.
Now it was Alasdair’s turn to smile.
With a whisper of a spell, he sent the light careening into the demon’s chest. Chained as it was, nothing it did could deflect the orb. The second the light touched it, the demon screamed. It didn’t stop screeching as it disintegrated into the black smoke it had been. But the light didn’t stop, penetrating every piece of darkness inside the mirrored room Alasdair had created, the glow blinding.
The cries of agony cut off abruptly as the last wisp of smoke was obliterated, and Alasdair pitched forward, hands on his knees, breathing hard.
He’d killed the demon. Decimated it. Belial would never come for him again.
He didn’t have time to celebrate—Delilah and his people still fought for their own souls.
In a blink, he returned to himself, right in the moment Delilah had brought that blade to her throat, as though time had stood still while he battled.
She went to slice her jugular, only Alasdair grabbed her by the arm. “Not yet.”
…
That was the real him speaking, and Delilah sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes cleared, turning piercingly blue, even in the dark of the night. Then tingling swept through her blood, flowing to every part of her. The demon trying to take her over syphoned out of her in a damn hurry, becoming shadow once again, writhing on the ground in swirls of contorted darkness, as though in pain.
