Try As I Smite (Brimstone INC.)

by Abigail Owen

  “I’m not sure yet. Best guess? This demon attack and the ones happening now are connected. They want you for a reason. Can you think of anything a demon might want?”

  The spot over her heart warmed again, suddenly.

  His must’ve as well, because he grimaced. “I guess we dissect this later.”

  He was right. The faster they got through the visions, the sooner he could return to his people. Delilah crossed back to his side and held out her hand, which he took in a distracted way, most likely thinking through what she’d just said, his hand swallowing hers whole.

  Instantly, the darkness consumed her vision, her only link to reality the strong, remarkably steady hand wrapped around her own.

  Chapter Four

  Sight returned in a blink and a shiver over his skin, though Alasdair recognized that he wasn’t actually feeling the cold. More like the idea of the cold, the memory. Snow again. Just a dusting of it this time, crystalizing on the tops of storefront awnings and parked cars.

  Delilah slipped her hand from his. In the transition, he forgot he hadn’t wanted to touch her again. Contrarily, he didn’t want to let go now.

  She’d been a beacon of warmth, of escape, in the middle of that memory—of that moment he’d tried so hard to block out and forget since the night he’d left the house for good. The edge of that memory had been dulled, though. Almost like her presence today had altered it somehow. Reached through the past and made it…not easier exactly—

  Focus. If he couldn’t be in the here and now, dealing with a demon problem, then he’d damn well use his time wisely.

  Since, apparently, he’d been marked to be a target for all of time. Why him? Was taking over mages, with the variety of powers, always the plan, and he’d just been caught in the crossfire as a youth? Or was it the fact he came from an ancient magical family line and was extremely powerful? Maybe that was why they’d gone after his father initially—he’d been the head of the Covens Syndicate at the time.

  But did they need Alasdair for his power? Or to keep him from preventing their uprising?

  Had he been the one to bring the demon problem down on his own people?

  The familiarity of the street where they now stood settled over him like déjà vu. Thankfully, not in the same gut-wrenching way his childhood home had. Sparkling red and green Christmas decorations adorned the streetlamps and storefronts and signs advertised holiday sales. Familiar Christmas carols piped from several of the stores as patrons opened the doors.

  Clearly this was his memory they were visiting. A theme was starting to form here. Both of their previous memories had happened around the holidays. Did she despise this time of year as much as he did?

  “Come on,” she said, then took off down the street, obviously having an idea of what was going on. Only…why would she?

  With a frown he hurried to catch up, long strides bringing him to her side quickly. “This is my memory,” he said. “Shouldn’t I be leading?”

  She flicked him a wary glance. “I’m pretty sure this one is mine.”

  Alasdair stopped her with a hand to her elbow. “It can’t be. After…my family’s death, I went to live with my aunt and uncle in New York. I walked this street almost every day between school and their home.” He’d refused the chauffeur.

  Dark eyes searched his. Delilah was back in control of herself, not betraying her thoughts by so much as a blink.

  He didn’t like it.

  In the same way he didn’t like it when the ending of a book didn’t meet with his expectations. Or when demons showed up and started possessing his people. It couldn’t be because he’d liked seeing the softer side of her. The side that had welcomed his hold, his comfort. The sense of…connection…to the real woman behind the façade.

  “Don’t do that,” he said.

  She blinked, a crease forming between her brows. “Do what?”

  “Wall me out.”

  “I’m not.”

  He leaned over to look closely into her eyes. “Yeah. The bricks are going up faster than I thought.” He straightened, fighting the ridiculous urge to grin at her aggrieved glare. He’d rather she be angry than shut off. “Like it or not, we’re partners in this.”

  “I know that,” she snapped.

  “Good.”

  She threw up her hands. “Great.”

  They both settled, gazes locked, and damned if heat didn’t flare through him. Gods, he wanted her. A bad idea no matter what angle he looked at it from. Maybe antagonizing her was a bad idea.

  “You’re sure?” she asked, breaking his thoughts into fragments. “About this being yours?”

  He took a second to pick back up on the conversation. “Yes.”

  “Then how would I know that the next vision is going to happen down here?” She turned him by the shoulders, and Alasdair stilled.

  He recognized this alley.

  Darker than others, full of boxes and piles of trash bags. As a kid, he’d gotten a creepy feeling about it, though he refused to avoid it. And a good thing, too, because—

  Eighteen-year-old him came strolling down the street and passed right through current day him, sending a sickening sensation rolling through his stomach. But the memory of himself stopped suddenly, staring into the darkness of the alley. Listening.

  Alasdair already knew for what.

  …

  Delilah had no doubt exactly what came next. The windigo she’d defeated. Horrible creatures, and she’d only ever come across the one. This had been a job she hadn’t contracted out to any of her people, taking it on herself, because of a promise she’d made to a phoenix in exchange for a favor. But what the hell did that have to do with Alasdair?

  She peered closer at the boy standing before them. Almost a man, balanced at the beginning of adult life, though his blue eyes had held a sadness that day. Something deeper than what a kid that age should know.

  Black hair. Crystal blue eyes. Cut glass jaw. The same aura of total command.

  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.

  “What is it?”

  “A windigo.”

  “The flesh eaters? I thought they were extinct?”

  “Apparently not.”

  Again, Delilah gathered her power inside her. This type of creature, malevolence incarnate, wouldn’t die by physical means. She needed to send its spirit to the hell reserved for evil. She needed to guide it into the runes she’d already drawn on the ground. A trap that would funnel it where she wanted. This would’ve been a lot easier to do with surprise on her side. Dammit.

  Wind whipped down the alley, stirring papers and loose trash, sending it swirling around the creature. Sensing where that power was coming from now, it turned away from the boy, stalking toward her. Delilah backed up carefully, focused on the words, on the power. It should be slowing down, given what she was throwing at it. But it wasn’t. Instead it kept coming at her, fast.

  She scurried to keep out of reach, while trying to get it to move to its right a few feet. Except the focus she needed to perform this complicated of a ritual was slowing down her physical reaction times. A mistake she realized the second the thing swiped at her with its extra-long arm, backhanding her hard. Delilah hit the brick of the building wall, her head ringing with the crack of sound from the impact, then dropped to her side.

  “I’ve got it!” The boy’s voice penetrated the stunned stupor clouding her mind.

  She sat up to find those electric lines wrapping around the windigo, keeping it from coming any closer to her, though it strained against the bindings.

  “Pull it to the right!” she yelled.

  Somehow, face contorted with determination, the boy managed to shift the massive creature. The second it entered her circle, the lines on the ground lit up, as though glowing from underneath.

  Seeing her opening, Delilah leaped to her feet and continued chanting, calling upon magic as ancient as the universe itself. The winds whipped harder and the windigo howled like a hyena, high-pitched and creepy. One of the electric lines snapped, and it surged closer, struggling against the boy’s bonds, reaching for her with taloned fingers.

  “I can’t hold it much longer,” he called, still out of sight, blocked by the body of the creature they were working together to destroy.

  Delilah whispered the last of the words.

  The windigo’s scream changed pitch, turning frenetic as the thing shook from antlers to bony feet. Then the rest of its body disintegrated, one piece at a time. The screeching was the last thing to go, cut off abruptly.

  But did we kill the demon inside the creature? Or just send it back to the hells?

  The wind ceased the instant it was gone, and suddenly the original Delilah faced the boy across a divide of darkened alley, a dusting of snow falling over them, both of them breathing heavily.

  A glance in that back corner, and the demon was gone already.

  The old her was still catching her breath, and tossed him a smile. “You did good, kid.”

  “I’m not a kid,” he said. Not cocky or whiny. Just stating a fact.

  Delilah tipped her head, regarding him more closely. “No. I can see you’ve been a man longer than your age would indicate.”

  He drew his shoulders back. “I had no choice.”

  That deep, aching sadness lingered in the tones. Only now Delilah knew what he meant. She’d witnessed the aftermath. Watched a young boy try to contain his hurt and fear and the fact that his world had been ripped apart while no one helped him cope. Not really.

  A flash of images hit her mind, as sometimes happened with her ability to See.

  Oh my gods. She’d forgotten all about that small prediction that day.

  It had happened so fast, been so simple. And nothing that required her intervention. Images of the boy as a man. Gaining more and more magical power. Taking an important position among his people. Doing great things—selfless things, for the sake of his kind.

  “I foresee a future of leadership for you,” she heard the words coming from her own mouth, even as the memory resounded in her mind. “You’ll become a helper to those who need it most. A protector. A good man. Don’t let anyone or anything tell you otherwise.”

  She nodded at the human, out cold but still bleeding. “For now…help him.”

  Before the boy could take a step closer, she whispered another series of words, these faster and easier than the spell to vanquish the windigo, and disappeared.

  In the same instant, she found her current self back outside that alley, standing beside Alasdair the man. He turned to her, face like a granite wall, unreadable. “That was you.”

  Not a question this time. More like an accusation.

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “I promise I didn’t know that was you.”

  “But yo
u saw my future,” he insisted, a note in his voice off. Too intense. Too…something.

  She shook her head. “I saw flashes. Results. More than I saw you. Or I would have recognized you when we met…formally.”

  His thick brows lowered over eyes still intensely blue. But he nodded slowly, seeming to accept her word. “You were in the dark, with that hood over your head,” he murmured, gaze skating over her features. “I never saw your face.”

  “I—” But what else could she say. Delilah stared back, waiting. Waiting for him to say something else or drop it or look away. Or for the blackness to return and take them somewhere new. What else in this moment could her mother possibly need them to understand?

  “You changed my life that day,” Alasdair said in a voice gone gruff. Red flags of color appeared over his cheekbones, the skin drawing tight. “That prediction…it made me who I am today.”

  A dizzying rush of—Pride? Thankfulness? Neither made sense—waylaid her, and Delilah had to force herself not to look away. “I didn’t make you who you are, Alasdair,” she said quietly. “It was always there, that potential future. Always part of you. I just told you not to doubt it.”

  A protector. The prediction rattled around inside her. A good man. A rare person she could put her trust in.

  I wish to all the gods I could help you.

  “Did you ever think of me after that?”

  The quiet question caught her raw.

  “Sometimes.” She smiled. “I wondered what had become of that boy. If he’d turned into the man I’d seen in those flashes.”

  Hell, he’d become so much more based not just on her research of him recently, but on what today had revealed. On the way he’d held her when she’d been hurting, even as angry as he was with her. The way his concern for his people was almost palpable in his frustration to get through this.

  The way her body came to life with every damn touch.

  Alasdair stepped in to her, framing her face with his hands, sending sparks of need along the sensitive nerves of her skin, his blue eyes so intense her heart ratcheted up, electricity singing through her blood and wakening a part of her that only he seemed able to bring to life.