Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 56 -

The rattling of the carriage might have lulled me to sleep, if it were not for the bloody thoughts that kept circling through my head. Luckily for me, Damian did not leave me alone to dwell in gruesome things.

"What happened to you?" he said, after a few moments had passed of us riding in silence. "When you fell. Did something harm you?"

I shook my head slowly. Some things I was certain of. But others... "I know the demon was trying to get inside me. I kept hearing him speaking with my own voices, arguing with them to be "let in"...but they wouldn't allow it. They called him a rat...a..." I frowned as I tried to recall. "A sub-par echelon beast."

Damian nodded slowly. "The demonic kingdom is divided into echelons. It's a hierarchy, of sorts. Upper, lower, sub-par - perhaps there's others. It would seem your demons did not like the idea of a lower caste being in their midst. Lucky for you." He paused, then added. "Or perhaps unlucky, for it gives us a glimpse into their tastes. They want only other powerful demons inside you."

"Fantastic," I said dryly. Of course, I had to be possessed by demonic snobs. "But when I fell - and even before that - something strange happened. I kept getting flashes."

I could see Damian's brain working before he said anything - the confusion played around the corners of his eyes. "Flashes? Of what?"

"Intrusive thoughts," I said. "It was like when Krahia would entice me to be violent - he'd show me horrible things. But this was a little different. When I fell, I had a vision. A dream, I suppose." I watched him carefully. "I was you. Seeing through your eyes, I think, because I was holding your pistol and had your hands."

I couldn't read the expression that came over his face, for it was only fleeting. Was it fear? I went on, "There was a woman, in an alleyway. In Storyville, I recognized it. The narrow streets, those old buildings. The woman was taunting you. She was possessed. She laughed when you hit her." I gulped. That vision of the heart in my hands, being cast into the fire: it was familiar. Not because I had seen it before, no. Because I had heard it described. Emblazoned across the front page of the morning's newspapers every time a new corpse was discovered. "I shot her. Or...in that vision...your hands, your pistol, shot her. Your voice threatened her. I watched you burn her heart."

His face was like stone. Unmoving, chiseled into a blank expression. My heart rate was increasing, pounding painfully against my ribs. I didn't want to see him cut off from me like that. Silent, distant.

"Please tell me why I saw that," I said softly. "The demon was taunting me, I know it was. But why that? Why would..."

"In defense, demons will seek to unsettle and disturb those who are threatening them," Damian said, his gaze fixated upon his hands, folded in his lap, fingers woven tightly together. "They will seek out memories or emotions, particularly powerful ones, in their attackers and then use it against them. It would seem, in this case, that Shax chose to use one of my own memories against you."

I sunk back in my seat. "Then it was real? That was a real memory?"

"From how you've described it, yes," Damian's words were clipped. "That scenario is familiar to me."

I didn't know what to say. Those words - lying in bed with a killer - repeated over and over again, I had thought they were aimed at me. I was the killer. But...

But I was not the only one.

"I told you before," Damian said quickly. "Not every victim can be saved. Sometimes, a demon will utterly destroy the person within. Anything that was human will be gone, leaving only a shell controlled by a demon. They can not all be saved." His voice broke, and he looked up, meeting my eyes. "I always dreaded taking out that pistol. My grandmother gifted it to me, before I left her, in hopes it would keep me safe. It can destroy a demon, utterly. But of course...at the expense of any hope that their victim might recover. I never wanted to use it. Never. And I never had! In all my years I'd never had to -" He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose and going silent. I wished my heart would stop pounding. I wished I could stop replaying the vision of that woman's skull being blasted to bits.