Page 18 of Try As I Smite
With a silent gasp, she swung her head sharply to stare at Alasdair, picturing him younger, his features not yet as sharp as they were, hair floppier, shoulders not as broad.
“Oh my gods. That was you?”
That had Alasdair snapping his head around to stare at her with eyes narrowed then opening wide on a wave of realization. “What do you mean?”
Before she could answer, a gurgling sound, like someone trying to inhale through water without a snorkel, came from deep in the alley, and the younger version of Alasdair took off, running directly toward danger.
Instead of following, though, Delilah suddenly found herself in the back of the alley, her perspective changed.
Blinking at the suddenness of the transition, she lifted arms clothed differently—a long-sleeved black shirt and skintight pants in a soft, easily maneuverable spandex material. Leather boots on her feet, good for running for a fast escape. She’d worn a black cloak that day, the hood up, hair braided over one shoulder.
I’m inside my own body. Her mother had never done this before. Was she going to relive the moment inside herself?
Where was Alasdair?
Only she didn’t have time to search. That gurgling sound was a man, and the beast at his throat was one of the more gruesome sights she’d encountered in her long life. The thing she was after had already started a fresh kill before she could get there. But if she could stop it now, the human might live.
Gathering her power inside herself, she knew she had only one shot at this before the windigo turned on her. Larger, faster, and with the ability to paralyze its victims with one bite, it could kill her before she could protect herself or escape if she wasn’t careful. She opened her mouth to whisper the words to manifest the power to obliterate the creature. Words taught to her by both her parents.
She lifted her hands, ready to unleash.
“Get off him!” the boy demanded, voice deeper than one would expect from a teenager. More than a hint of the man to come.
Carefully, trying not to draw attention to herself, Delilah stepped back into the shadows.
The windigo, still unaware of her presence, rose from the human it was gnawing on, and the boy’s startlingly blue eyes tracked it up and up and up. Over twelve feet of towering beast. The thing had the head of a deer, antlers spreading wide from the top, but all bone, like staring at a skull bleached white by the sun. Black sockets where the eyes and nose should be. But what made her flinch, a rare bout of revulsion bubbling up inside her, was the fact that it had no skin anywhere. Its bones and the red sinews of its muscles were exposed.
Legend had it, a windigo lived in constant agony in this form.
It relied on human flesh to skin itself. To see. The longer it went between meals, the more of its body rotted away. The putrid scent of it filled the alley, overwhelming the already sour scent of the trash.
Suddenly Delilah caught it—not Delilah from the original moment, but herself now. The faint glow of the demon’s mark on Alasdair’s forehead. She jerked her focus to the creature. Without eyes in its sockets, it was impossible to tell. Was the thing possessed?
It must be, because that mark would glow like that only around the demon who’d marked Alasdair. It had come for him again. This time in the body of a monster. A supernatural creature who was pure instinct. No reasoning, just killing. Demons loved to possess creatures such as those.
Except, if the demon had marked him, he was out to possess him, not kill him. She jerked her head around, searching.
There.
In the darkest recesses of the alley, a column of smoke the size of a man lurked in the shadows. Waiting. How many other demon attacks had he survived? And why were they so intent on taking Alasdair?
Shit. We’re in trouble. She paused at the thought and mentally corrected. He was in trouble, and she could do nothing but stand by and watch. A thought that sat like sludge in her gut, oozing through her.
What else had she missed that day? Delilah focused on the moment, re-experiencing everything as her old self went through the motions.
The boy Alasdair didn’t step back as the monster stalked him. Instead he raised his chin, staring the thing down. Then white-blue electricity ignited in his palms, forming ropes around his hands as he curled them into fists.
The windigo, sensing power in this new, fresh meat, abandoned the poor man lying unconscious and oozing blood on a heap of rubbish, and stalked toward the boy, head bobbing lightly as it sized up its prey.
Damn.
Delilah stepped out of the shadows. “You don’t want him,” she said in a cajoling voice. “I promise, I have more power than a child.”
The windigo whipped toward the sound of her voice, lifting its nose—exposed bone with a hole where the flesh should be—to sniff the air.
“Lady, run. I have this,” the boy insisted.
“Not if you knew what this is,” she tossed back, keeping her eyes on the creature who’d stilled between them.
