Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 28 -

The Beast hit me with the force of a freight train. My vision flashed and my feet left the ground, before my back slammed against the stone wall of the cellar and the air rushed out of my lungs. I crumpled to the dirt like a crushed bug, gasping, vision blurred, ears ringing. Then I was flying through the air yet again, massive hands crushing me and slamming me to the ground.

I spat up blood, and struggled even to get my arms beneath me. Sound was undefined and I could see only vague shapes. I knew that at any second, the Beast would rush me again and this time he was likely to break my bones. What had I been thinking coming here? I was truly mad for even considering I could help...

"You promised to help me," I whispered, my ribs aching as I attempted to force air between them. "Are you this weak? Help me...please..."

So now she wants help. Now she gives in. Stupid girl. Learned your lesson yet?

Another roar rattled my bones. My stolen cleaver had fallen and lay just out of my reach, abandoned in the dirt. Through wavering vision I could see its blade shine in the candlelight. The priest lay nearby, blood streaming from his face, motionless. As if coming to me from the end of a long tube, I could hear Damian's voice, chanting in a language I did not understand. The words made me dizzy. I wanted him to stop.

"Help me, please," I begged, as I watched the Beast's booted feet step between me and the cleaver. "You can have control. Take it. I don't want to die...like this..."

Their laughter filled my head. It was cruel, maniacal, heartless. There, creeping in the corner behind the Beast, the Black One rose, yellow eyes vibrant with excitement. The red-haired man glanced over at him, rolled his eyes, and went back to watching the chaos as if it were the evening's best entertainment.

"Take me," I pleaded. "Help me kill him."

In a rush my body went numb. The pain was gone, the exhaustion - gone. Air rushed into me and burned like ice through my chest. My vision darkened and my muscles pulsated with an unnatural electricity. I moved quicker than my own vision could comprehend. One moment I was sprawled in the dirt, the next I was crouched low behind the Beast, cleaver in hand. Now when the Beast turned, I could see it: a dark dripping being clinging onto his back, tentacles wrapped around his torso, strange suckered orifices latched onto his neck. That was the true Beast, the demon who inhabited the man, the parasite using his body as a disguise.

An ancient one, powerful...but no match.

I lunged forward, cleaver swinging, and sliced at the massive man's belly. He roared, and swung the pole at the end of his chains toward me. I ducked as it hit the wall behind me with a metallic clang, sending shards of stone splintering and flying through the air. I rolled forward, past his legs, slicing through his achilles tendon as I did. He should have gone down, but I watched as the strange being on his back whipped down a tentacle to cover the wound. He kept charging.

Was that what I looked like? When Damian looked upon me, did he see the Black One clinging to me, or the others? Is that what I had given my body over to? A parasite, feeding off of me, using me...but not just one. Dozens, hundreds. Perhaps more. I had given them control...

It was what they had wanted all along.

The Beast grabbed hold of me, one massive hand wrapping around my throat, encircling it, lifting me. I hacked at him even as I choked, blood splattering. When I dropped to the ground, his severed arm dropped with me. Everything was a blur and it was just he and I, locked in unholy battle. The longer they had control, the less I could differentiate between my own choosing and their's. It was I that laughed with utter joy when a fresh spray of blood warmed my face. It was I who danced on light feet around an opponent that was more ruined flesh than man. It was I who took joy in the carnage.

Wasn't it?

And when the Beast fell, when his weak mortal body had broken, I was not satisfied to see the tentacled demon relinquish his hold and slither away, vanishing like smoke in the wind. I did not feel pity when the man raised his eyes and they were no longer crazed, but frightened. I smiled when he whimpered, "What...who...are you?"

I raised my cleaver. "I'm your one-way ticket to Hell, darling."

But I never got the chance to swing that cleaver home. Someone seized hold of my wrist in a vice-like grip, and then reach around to pin my free arm tightly to my side. Crushed back against the body behind me, I could smell ash and sage. I could feel the heat and sweat of his body. The stubble on his face scratched my cheek as he leaned close and whispered harshly in my ear, "Stop what you're doing, Samara. You are not yourself."

My upraised arm shook in his grip. I was suddenly frightened: frightened of the control I had given up so easily, frightened by the intoxicating power I had felt, frightened of the hulking man on his knees before me whose ragged denim clothes were covered in his own blood. The darkness wavered in my vision and I saw the man as he was: a worker, likely a shipman to judge from his massive rubber boots, a man whose body was made strong by hard labor but who trembled with fear and confusion with his demon having fled.

Worthless, waste of flesh, give us our blood, give us the death promised.

Hatred flared up in me, like a fire I could not quench, unbidden. But with the danger passed, I did not want to feel it. I wanted control of my body once more, but it was not so simple was it?

Stupid girl, you begged for help. Foolish. Selfish. You begged for help and got it. Be thankful.

I strained to swing my arm. I began to struggle. Damian held me fast. "Alex! Remove him!" he cried, and I realized that Father Alexander was on his feet lingering nearby. His nose was crooked and bleeding from the pole he had taken to the face, but he was conscious. He rushed over and helped the hulking, bleeding man to his feet, ushering him towards the stairway.

"What about you, lad?" he asked, breathless, voice distorted by the damage to his nose. Now that I saw him so close, I realized he could not have been any older than Damian himself.

I felt Damian shake his head. "Go. Get him to a hospital. I've got her."

Alex wavered, then nodded. "I'll come back for you."

"That's right, run! Coward!" The voice poured out of my mouth like bile followed by laughter. I wanted to cry. I wanted it to stop. My body moved, my back arching to press my backside closer to Damian as my head rolled to rest on his shoulder. "Ever fucked a demon before, exorcist? I know you'd love to do it-"

In one swift motion Damian turned me to face him, forced the cleaver from my grasp and held me close against his body. I could feel the pounding of his heart, his muscles straining to contain me. Facing him head-on, his eyes bearing down into mine, was suddenly far more frightening than facing the Beast. I could still hear the voices but they were growing more muffled by the second. The strength with which they had imbued me was dissipating.

"Let her go, demon," he growled, the harshness in his voice making my belly twist up. The voices retreated further, screeching with fury. I didn't know what was pushing them away faster: Damian's words or the feeling growing within me on account of being so close to him. I felt like shrinking, like falling to my knees. Damian's grip on me was urgent, so tight as to be almost painful, the ash on his face making him appear like a man from another age, dark and dangerous.

"Return this instant, Samara," he said. "And you'd better return talking quickly, as I'm going to need a lot of convincing to not take you up to the chapel and cane the damned demons right out of you."