Try As I Smite

by Abigail Owen

  Delilah’s father had sent him to the forested mountains of northern California, just outside the Syndicate headquarters.

  She’d made him leave. Had him sent away.

  Delilah.

  Everything inside him screamed and strained to go back and get her, but he couldn’t. He curled his hands into fists at his sides, pushing the devastation of losing her—because that’s what had just happened—down into the dark recesses of his soul.

  She was right. He was out of time.

  With a whisper of a spell, he teleported to the building. Alasdair didn’t use the landing pad officially created for teleporting use, a spell that tended to be windy on takeoff and landing. The wards around the Covens Syndicate building prevented arriving or departing within the walls as a precaution against magical invasion.

  His wards. Ones he’d put in place himself.

  Which meant he could break his own rules. So he bypassed the pad to appear directly in the main chamber where the members of the Syndicate met. The possessed members, now. The windows rattled a protest at his sudden, slightly violent appearance.

  “Dammit, Alasdair.” This from Abernathy Khan, the oldest of their order. “Rules.”

  Fuck, the demon inside his old mentor was good. That was exactly what the real Abernathy would have said.

  Don’t believe it. It’s not him.

  He ignored the old man, looking around. Two empty chairs now. His and… “Where is Hestia?”

  “Behind you, big brother.”

  Alasdair tried not to stiffen, calling on that control that he’d lost sight of today as he’d gone through all those visions with Delilah. Because that might be Hestia’s voice, but his sister never called him big brother. Ever.

  “Good. We’re going to need you,” he said, pretending to be ignorant of the demon inside her.

  Inside his sweet younger sister, who’d been raised separately from him because she cried every time she saw him and had to remember what he’d done to their father. Who he’d hardly known until they were both adults, when he’d discovered that she cried because she hated what he’d had to witness and go through, not because she blamed him. Anger seeped into his bones like poison, and he had to physically hold back his own power. He was going to need it for what was about to come.

  He had to stop this. Here and now.

  A whoosh of sound, soft as hummingbird wings, was the only warning he had before Delilah suddenly appeared in the room next to him. Right in front of him, back to the others so she could look up into his face, hers deadly serious, paler than her usual shade of cream. She glanced around and he could have sworn relief flitted across her expression.

  Relief?

  “I just saw the future,” she said, dark eyes intent.

  And came rushing to him after so adamantly refusing to come with him? Not only that, she was relieved to see him in a room full of demon-possessed mages? Whatever she’d seen must’ve been horrific.

  “Let me help,” she said. “Please.”

  Begging? He couldn’t allow that from this amazing, tough, brave woman. He reached for her, but a voice stopped him.

  “Alasdair?” Hestia circled around to face him. “Why is this…person…here?”

  He ignored the facsimile of his sister, focused on the woman in front of him.

  Delilah didn’t move by so much as a twitch. “Trust me,” she mouthed.

  …

  Even the thought of what she was about to do had the bindings around her wrists clamping down so hard, keeping the agony from her face was a battle of sheer will. If Alasdair knew, he’d send her away.

  The instant she’d landed back in her office, the significance of those sparking lights around the crater in that future vision had struck. This moment, right now, would start the entire battle. Because Alasdair was going to blow up the building. He had made that crater in the future.

  Not even her mother could have predicted that, or Delilah had no doubt that vision would have started in this room instead.

  The man stared down at her and she could see the battle in his eyes. Who’d already betrayed him by refusing to help once? Would he trust a woman whose blood was half demon? She wasn’t remotely confident that she’d make a difference. Her vision hadn’t gone beyond what happened without her here. After seeing that…no fucking way was she letting him face this alone.

  Alasdair’s expression settled, determination there in the cold set of his jaw, and utter, incredible trust in the blue of his eyes. “Okay, goddess. Call the shots.”

  She couldn’t let the burst of relief at his words distract her. He wasn’t going to like the shot she called. Neither was she.

  Wrists already screaming in agony, she turned slowly.

  Pain leaked from her eyes in rivulets down her cheeks that she ignored even as her skin now might as well have been dipped in dragon fire. She put out a hand, palm facing them, feeling the essence of each demon in the room. Lower-level demons. Her mother had once explained that escaping the bounds of the seven hells was easier when the signature you put out, due to a lower power level, wasn’t as easily traceable.

  Exactly what Delilah had been hoping for.

  These were placeholders for the more powerful demons to come. Which meant, thanks to her mother’s stronger demon blood—the original blood of angels—in Delilah’s veins, she held sway over these foot soldiers.

  With a grip on the demons’ essences, she dropped two words into the silent room of watching demons and magi. “Idimmu Alka.”

  Demon Come.

  Then formed a fist and jerked it toward her.

  As the demons screamed a protest at being forcibly wrenched from the bodies they inhabited, pain lit up every single nerve ending in her body, radiating up her arms and down her spine and outward. Agony sent her to her knees.

  “Delilah?” Alasdair’s voice barely registered.

  “When they’re out,” she managed to choke. “Take the others and go.”

  “I’m not leaving you—”

  “Please.” She wasn’t beneath begging. Not for his life. “Trust me.”

  Even if she died in the process.

  The last demon, shadow seeming to hold on to the body it had claimed by the tips of its claws, finally slipped free. “Go!” she shouted.

  In an instant, wind battering her, he was gone, along with every other human in the room.

  “Impossible,” one of the shadows hissed.

  Delilah didn’t stop, though.

  Summoning the strength to push through the pain, she spoke again. “Ati Me Peta Babka. Alik.”

  Gatekeeper, open your gate to me. Go.

  A whirlpool opened at her feet, sinking into the polished marble flooring and leading to the seven hells. A cry rose from the shadowy forms as, one by one, they were sucked inside, sent back to the first level of hell where the gatekeepers would determine what to do with them. Their own terror spiked through her heart, shards of ice joining the blistering heat consuming her.

  This one act made her a traitor to her own kind. These were half her people, only wanting to escape the hells in which they’d been trapped. No more perfectly evil than the angels were perfectly pure.

  Her parents had taught her that.

  But she had no choice. If the demons found their way out in numbers, they would consume the world. Alasdair and his people were not going to be their gateway. Not if she could help it.

  Only, the whirlpool started to drag at her own body.

  Oh gods. She’d forgotten to protect herself with her summoning words. The hells wouldn’t differentiate between demons’ souls.

  Scrambling, she tried to teleport herself away, but, as though vines had wrapped around her ankles, she felt herself being pulled inexorably into the void.

  She tried one series of words, then another, the slick floor giving he
r fingernails no purchase and her spells doing nothing. As though the words and her power were consumed by the portal she’d created.

  As she was dragged in, black spots appeared in her vision, slowly narrowing to a pinprick. Then something grabbed her by the wrists and a scream tore from her mouth at the instant, bone-shuddering agony. But whatever it was didn’t let go, pulling at her so hard, she thought her spine might snap from the strain of the opposing forces.

  “Don’t you give up on me, dammit.”

  Alasdair’s voice.

  No. He shouldn’t be here. He needed to be out there with his people. Fighting. Because more demons were waiting. She knew that for certain from her trip to the future.

  “Let me go,” she begged.

  “No fucking way.”

  But she slipped in his grasp, sweat—his, hers—making her skin slick.

  “Dammit,” he muttered.

  Then two more sets of hands landed on her, one on each arm and, in a massive tug, she was freed of the whirlpool, landing in a heap, half on Alasdair, by the scent of his cologne, and half on the cold stone floor. But the whirlpool was still going. It wanted all the demons in the room.

  A familiar voice—her father’s voice—uttered an incantation, and the sound stopped along with the drag on her body. Delilah slumped forward, catching her breath, aware of the rise and fall of Alasdair’s chest. She shook her head, clearing her vision, and lifted her head, that small action shaking her whole body, to find both her parents kneeling beside them.

  “Mom?” she choked through a throat constricting around too much emotion. “Dad?”

  They weren’t supposed to be here. Her mother was too weak, and it went against every rule on both sides.

  Hazah cupped a hand to her cheek. “You will always be my baby.”

  Her father took her by the hands and helped her to her feet, then whispered words that sent a cooling rush over flaming nerves and healing the oozing blisters and boils that had formed around the circumference of her wrists. Not removing her shackles, but soothing her so that she could keep going. He yanked her into his arms, and for the first time ever, showed her an emotion, his body shaking against her.

  “We’ve tipped our hand,” he murmured in her hair. “If we do anything else to help—”

  Their own people would come for them. “I know.”

  She took a deep breath, stepping back to look at them both, maybe truly seeing their love for the first time. “I love you.”

  Before they could respond, she gripped Alasdair’s arm and whisked just the two of them to where instinct told her his people were gathering.

  They appeared on the mountainside, at the top looking out and over a small, snow-covered valley. One filled with hundreds…no thousands…of mages. Not possessed yet, she didn’t think. Here to fight. Their chanting filled the night air with the heavy weight of powerful magic.

  A glance to her right showed her Rowan and Greyson Masters both there. Had they left the Syndicate in order to bring others? Thank the gods, because they needed all the help they could get. Rowan, her mouth moving with the words of the spell, nodded her head in acknowledgment.

  In the same moment, Alasdair whirled around, taking her by the shoulders. “Dammit, Delilah. You’ve done everything you can. Clear out of here.”

  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.

  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.