by Bella Benz
The Witch's Demon
Delsin Chronicles Book 1
Bella Benz
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Copyright © 2020 Bella Benz
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: Art Painter
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Title Page
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Copyright
Preface
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Epilogue
From the author
DELSIN CHRONICLES
Books By This Author
Preface
Though Delsin is only frozen in the time web for a couple of minutes, his mind was cast back into Lilith’s past. Whether intentionally or not, she had opened her memories to him. His mind slammed into her consciousness and he saw everything through her eyes. From the spell that had brought forth the incubus to the change of heart her mother had, Lilith’s past was no less tragic than his own.
If you haven’t read the prequel to Delsin Chronicles, click here to read it for FREE before moving any forward.
CHAPTER ONE
Delsin tried to direct his body to move forward as the time web dragged his mind into the past. His thoughts were a jumble of disappointment, curiosity, longing, and loss as Lilith vanished from sight. He needed to chase after her, to try to convince her of what she had denied him two decades ago. He still believed what she had told him; he just needed to prove that he was right. And he still loved her just as much. The future was not predestined by what a person was. The choices they made mattered. Even though he had to admit that her skills were nearly unrivalled, Delsin could not accept the idea that Lilith was happy with the path she was on. They had talked for years before that kiss. He felt that he had gained the necessary insight into who she really was, not the person she thought she had to be.
He knew that feeling. After his parents had died, Delsin had been forced to face the idea that he was a warlock, a demon hunter by nature, not by choice. When he met Lilith, he had finally felt all of the pressure of his birth fall away as he saw the possibilities of a life with someone he should have hated. The only reason he had finally become a hunter was to find her, and even then he had taken a completely unorthodox approach to how he dealt with those he hunted. As often as possible, he had spared creatures, hoping that when he found her he could prove that there were always other ways to fulfill a destiny.
The problem that he refused to admit to himself was that she had clearly not followed the same path. As he struggled against the threads pulling him into the past, Delsin couldn’t deny just how adept Lilith had proven to be based on the little he had seen of what she had done. Even the time web was beautifully crafted and cruel. Delsin was painfully disappointed with how he had dropped his guard so completely that Lilith had been able to so easily trap him in something that he could have used against her. It wasn’t exactly an easy spell. If he had been paying attention, he would have noticed what she was doing and flipped the spell back on her to freeze the demon in place. He had done it before when faced with the same threat. It would have been a fast solution, one that would have ended the plight of the village and brought her back to him.
Instead he had let his emotions sway him, making it possible for her to escape. After all this time, he had finally failed. Not that anyone would know besides him, but he would still know it, and something told him that this failure would plague him for the rest of his life.
Even worse, he was losing the fight against the time web. Delsin’s mind was well honed to be able to ignore enormous pain and to shut out emotions when he needed to, but now he was losing what should have been a simple fight against time manipulation. He knew that by allowing his mind to be dragged back in time, he would get to relive important memories, almost as if he were experiencing them for the first time. Having the chance to experience his history with Lilith again was incredibly attractive, especially given the uncertainty of the future. As much as he wanted to catch up with Lilith, he was afraid of what it might mean for them. The way she had expertly ensnared the village left no doubt that it was not her first time. The unique way she had done it showed that she had learned a lot from whatever she had experienced since he had last seen her, adapting her approach to more thoroughly trap the residents in such a way that they could not escape. He may have arrived in time to save the town, but Delsin knew that it was going to be a lot harder than any other job where he had not arrived too late. Now he would have to fight through an emotional aspect that he had never been trained to manage. Standing there, unable to move, Delsin was finally forced to ask the kinds of questions he had put aside for his entire adult life.
How much pain and suffering had she caused elsewhere? Did she really feel that this was the only life she could accept – a life that she had denounced and feared for so long? Was it possible to change her now that she had a better understanding of her own abilities?
A part of him knew that he had been naïve, believing that a demon would fight its true nature. They naturally preyed on humans and other animals in the same way that humans preyed on other animals and each other. It was in the demon’s nature to feed off of negativity – and no amount of love would have stopped that.
Yet he had dared to hope. Seeing Lilith again after two decades… Delsin felt like he was finally being forced to face a truth that he never wanted to accept.
His current predicament highlighted Delsin’s own inadequacies. The worst part was that he had always believed that Lilith wanted to be saved. Faced with her work, a part of him knew that she was finally giving in to her nature. Expecting her to live without preying on humans was like starving a vampire, then expecting the creature not to feed on a city full of people.
It was possible to fight nature, but it rarely ever yielded positive results.
What he couldn’t deny was the sadness he’d detected when she looked at him. His mind wanted that sadness to be regretful for the life she had lived since she had left him, but it was more likely that the feeling was tied to something else. Regret that he had seen what she became. While that indicated that she did know what she had done was wrong and in some way felt ashamed by it, Delsin couldn’t help but feel it was a sadness tied to being found out, not in having actually committed the crimes. That he had seen her turn into the very creature she had not wanted to be.
Whatever the cause for her sadness, Lilith had used it to her advantage. A dark part of his mind wondered if the sadness had been mostly for show, a way of distracting him from his work so that she could trap him in the time web.
But she probably could have killed me outright. I did nothing to protect myself before finding her. The protection I put up when I neared her wa
s not particularly strong. She had thoroughly distracted me and could have gotten through it if she had wanted. Instead, she spared me by giving me a way to relive our past.
Or perhaps that just shows how cruel she has become. The last thought came unbidden as the warlock began to lose the fight against the time web. He was too exhausted now that he knew who he was facing, the years of searching having ended in her running from him instead of running into his open arms. As he felt his mind slipping into the past, Delsin clutched at the last shred of hope that he had. Whatever she may feel about her current life, it’s clear that she hasn’t fully let go of what she once was. There’s still hope that she can be saved. The thought was enough to push him to try harder, to remain in the present instead of slipping into a happier time.
If he was going to reach her and change her mind, though, he had to move quickly. As it was, he was frozen in place, a victim to his own inability to acknowledge that she was no longer the same as the young woman he had loved. His arms and legs did not move as his mind fought against the pull of the web. Delsin knew that the only way out of the trap was to keep his mind in the present, a fight that was proving far harder than anticipated, as he knew what memories were bubbling to the surface. He wanted to return to those memories. He was almost desperate to go back to that simpler time when he had felt like everything would be all right, because it was all too clear that they were either at a precipice from which they would not be able to return – or they were already over it.
Delsin was not yet ready to let her go, but the nagging doubts made it nearly impossible to focus on the present in a way that kept his emotions clear. The time web latched onto his desire to revel in the past instead of facing the present. Fighting the trap and his mind, Delsin made one last attempt as he felt memories sucking him into the depths of a troubled past. As his vision became unfocused, he made one last desperate attempt to move his body forward.
No, you need to catch her. Focus!
All of the teaching, all of the training seemed to be forgotten as the pull to experience something more pleasant lulled him out of the sense of urgency. Like someone woken in the night by a loud noise only to dismiss it so they could go to sleep, Delsin was looking for comfort instead of confrontation. His desire to relive those few moments helped to pull his mind far from where he needed to be. As his will to fight waned, the time web slipped his mind and spirit out of the present, launching him into the past. Only his body remained in the wilds outside of the village, frozen like a statue.
Delsin slammed into the ground without feeling any pain. It was simply the expectation of pain that caused him to expel air that wasn’t there. The world felt so real that he couldn’t help but push himself up as if he were still in his body instead of drifting into a standing position, which would have been far easier. He was no more than a spirit trapped in the world; his body had not journeyed with him. The usual laws of science did not apply to his form because the present day version of Delsin had no place in the past. His mind was too distracted and torn to fully control himself, so he acted as if he were actually there, living through the events that were unfolding before him – a voyeur in his own history.
Once on his invisible feet, Delsin began to chastise himself for having allowed this to happen as he tried to return himself to the present. However, once a web had drawn a person in, it was nearly impossible to return until the period of the web had run its course. There was no way to know how much time Lilith had trapped in the web. Delsin’s powers were unrivalled, and it might have been possible for him to escape had the web been constructed by anyone else. It was his desire to stay that ensured that this was not a fight Delsin was going to win.
The sound of a lone voice fervently chanting finally broke through his attempts to return to his time, destroying any chance he had at fighting the spell. For now, Delsin was simply going to have to experience whatever it was Lilith was showing him in a much more visceral way. However, he would soon find out that she had not sent him into his own past. Lilith had found a way to do something new with her time webs.
Delsin looked around, his mind taking in everything as he tried to remember when he had experienced the scene in front of him. A woman knelt on the floor, her naked body covered in markings and intricate designs.
Delsin blinked.
He had broken up this kind of ceremony on several occasions, but nowhere in Delsin’s memory was there a hint of the woman in front of him. His ethereal body moved forward, watching her as she alternated between pleading and threatening. Usually when a witch conducted this kind of spell, her voice was powerful, stating her desire for power and demanding that a demon give it to her. Demons were loath to listen to such hubris because it proved that they could be controlled. The only reason they ever gave in was because they wanted someone who was willing to bear their children. Having a mortal who was willing to carry their spawn meant they would have a firmer foothold in the world. Pure demons lived in another dimension, coming to this planet only when they were invited. Their own children were often eager to call them forth – if they survived long enough to reach adulthood.
But this woman sounded more desperate. Her voice cracked a few times as she forced herself to finish what she had started. There was a hint of rebellion to her chanting, but it was clear that she was not looking for power – there was something else driving her desire to have a child. Like the demons he sensed hovering around her, Delsin began to move around the circle she had drawn, his eyes filled with knowing pity at what she had brought on herself.
Calling forth a demon to bear a child was all too common among certain types of witches. The child that would result from such a union would be under the complete control of its human mother – for as long as the mother was alive. It was why female witches were so much stronger than the males. Impregnating a demon was not at all the same as bearing the child, so the males never gained anything but carnal pleasure from such a union. Women who chose to bear a demonic child would have a willing slave who could continue their work long after they were dead. But it was an exchange that would cost them; once a demon child was born, the woman would never be able to bear another. Her womb shriveled and died once the pregnancy was over. And the risk of dying during childbirth was great since the birthing process was the infant’s last chance at breaking the chains of control. Until the baby was born, the demon father would protect the witch. Once it was time for the baby to be born, the demon would have no more use for the witch, and the child would fight to gain its freedom.
Yes, some women felt that it was worth it, but less than half of them survived the ordeal.
His eyes moved over the woman as she finished the spell, her body collapsing in front of the markings on the floor. There was a sense that she was surrendering herself through her actions, not demanding service from the demon.
Delsin looked around to see the number of demons who were drawn to the ritual. There were throngs of the creatures considering stepping forward. His mind went through all of his previous experiences as he tried to determine where what he was seeing fit into his life. Perhaps it was something his parents had experienced while his mother was pregnant. He watched the door, half hoping to get a chance to see them again.
Something was going on outside of the room. Frowning, he moved to the door, but it wasn’t his parents on the other side. Walking through the heavy wood, he found himself face to face with a coven who were striving to stop the ceremony. Although they were hurling curses and hexes, their attempts were futile – they could not stop the ceremony now without killing everyone in the building.
Curious, he stepped back into the room to see a fair-haired demon offering himself to the witch. His eyes glowed in the darkness, and for a second, Delsin felt as if the creature was looking directly at him.
“Come, and I shall grant you what you wish.”
The witch reached up, the fear obvious in her eyes.
A cold laugh echoed around the room, but there was no malice in
the creature’s eyes as he pulled her to him. “Away from prying eyes,” again the demon seemed to look at Delsin, “where I can tell you of the life you have chosen for yourself and my child.”
Delsin watched as the demon pulled the woman into the void. Confused, he wondered what had drawn him to this memory, one that seemed to have no place in his own life. Moving around the room, he wondered how it was possible that a human had been drawn into the demon’s dimension. The pregnancy should have started on this plane – where humans lived. How was it that the poor witch had been removed? Demons were never shy about what they were doing, and having an entire demonic audience would have enhanced the experience. This was a strange turn of events, and not one that aligned with any of his own memories.
Whatever answers he sought, Delsin would not get them by remaining in the moment. Even if he could not see it, he knew what was happening to the witch, and it would likely be a while before she would be returned – if she was returned at all.
Seeing that the time web was thinning, the warlock stepped through into the next thread along the web, like a hallway in a morbid museum where he could do nothing but watch events unfold.
✽✽✽
CHAPTER TWO
“You cannot do this! I am almost –” The croaking shout was cut off as the woman began coughing. Her fists stopped banging on Delsin’s chest and flew to her mouth, a few flecks of blood sprinkling her hands. Shocked, the warlock took a couple of steps back. He went through a thick wooden door, arriving on the other side where he quickly remembered that he was not physically there. The woman had not been upset with him; she had been shouting at the group of women on the other side of the door. He looked around at the small crowd watching as the woman outside fell to the ground, her strength gone or despair consuming her. Though Delsin wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, he knew that this was a group of witches, the sickeningly sweet smell making it clear that they had recently completed a ritual. The intended victim of that spell was clearly the woman outside.