Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 31 -

The chapel was calm and cool with evening's gray light. The sun had set. The cicadas were purring. I could hear the frogs by the river. Night's choir, singing. Amongst the song, at the forefront, was Damian's voice. Endless, strong. A long string of words in an unknown tongue. My stomach was light, but not sick. I felt...

I felt awake. I felt strong. As if an anvil had been pressing down on my chest and it had suddenly gone. I felt something on my hand, and when I looked, it was Damian's fingers intertwined with mine. Holding so tight his knuckles were white. Slowly, tiredly, I squeezed his hand.

He startled, his eyes flying open. Relief washed over him when he saw me staring back, and suddenly he wasn't holding my hand anymore. He was cradling my head, brushing my sweat-soaked hair away, eyes wide.

"You're back?" he murmured. "Are you back with me?"

My throat was dry and swollen, so I just nodded. I had the strange sensation in my body as if I had been swimming for hours, and my skin still felt the rhythm and swell of the water.

"What was that?" I whispered, the only sound I could manage. He laid my head back on the dusty stone floor, gently, and as he moved his hands away to push back his hair from his face I saw that they were shaking.

"That," he said, with a heavy, tired sigh. "Was an exorcism. And we survived it..." He sat back, exhaustion making his body sag. "You did it..."

I tried to sit up, but the movement made my head spin so I had to close my eyes and wait. An exorcism...then...did that mean...

"Are they gone?" I said. "Are they all gone?"

Damian looked at me, lips pressed tightly together, as if to keep the words in. Then, "No. Not all of them. Likely only the one that possessed you: Krahia."

"Krahia." The name no longer burned to say. There was no power in it anymore.

"The others will be quiet, for a while," Damian said. He wiped his hand over his face, smearing the ash from his skin. "But they're not gone. We must be on guard for them." He frowned, and shook his head in frustration. "And you must not ever offer them control. What in hell were you thinking?"

"I was saving your life," I grumbled. Damned know-it-all Damian. Ungrateful Damian. Sweaty...shirtless...panting Damian. "That beast would've knocked your head off if I hadn't shown up."

"You underestimate me," Damian muttered. "And you're damned hard-headed. I swear I've half a mind to..." He trailed off, waving his hand as if to shoo away the thought.

"Half a mind to cane me?" I chuckled softly, my mood improving. It seemed as if it had been ages since I had felt so light. "You've threatened that before, Damian, and I'm beginning to doubt you'll actually follow through."

He shot me a glare that could have frozen a man solid. "Of all things, I exorcise a demon from you and you pick now to be sassy? You endanger yourself, almost kill a man, break out of my house - and I don't even want to know how you managed that last bit. You're not sorry in the least for all the trouble you caused."

I shrugged, and sat up at last. I was too distracted by this new, nostalgically familiar feeling to truly focus on feeling sorry for anything. Even the air smelt cleaner somehow. I was covered in dirt and blood - doubtlessly a horrifying visage to behold. But my spirits flew high. "Make me sorry then," I said, as I looked at the blood beneath my fingernails and the scrapes across my palms. I was stronger than I thought...and not because I had faced a man twice my size and lived. I had faced some of my deepest fears, the ones that weighed down my soul, and I had not crumbled.

It was difficult to accept the thought that I had endured an exorcism, when I had seen nothing of it but my own nightmares. When I thought of exorcisms I imagined old priests in a church with their terrified victim tied to a bed, chanting Bible verses and holding aloft their rosaries. What had Damian done? And how...how had I managed to overcome a demon...