Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 73 -

The Gray One made me watch.

With her cold rotten hands on my face she forced my eyes open and held me immobile. My shattering mind was strewn between the realm of reality and the gray world. I felt my own body moving, like the irrational movements of someone roused suddenly from sleep. I watched through distant eyes as Damian tried to calm me, tried to reach out to me.

"I'm here!" I wept, but he couldn't hear me. All he saw were the ones controlling me, while the Gray One kept me captive and whispered in my ear.

"You will kill him," she hissed. "The last thing he see's will be your face before he dies. And he will die in despair."

When Damian raised his pistol and took aim I wept all the more, but it was with relief. He would end it. He would save himself and release me from this misery! But I was plummeting towards him, unable to stop. The cleaver I held would slice his head from his shoulders with one strike - I could feel the unnatural strength to do it pulsating through my muscles.

But then...

Why was he lowering his aim?

"I love you, Samara."

The words floated from his lips and hit me with the force of a train, but my controlled body did not slow. No...no...my panic began to rise again. It grew within me, a knot pulled tighter and tighter. He wasn't aiming! He wasn't going to shoot!

"I love you."

I choked on the sobs that racked my chest. I had awaited those words, and part of me thought they would never come. Even after all our intimacy, all his care and gentleness and devotion, why would I dare to think he would love a mad woman like me? But there it was...the words to make my heart swell and break at once, said with such sadness but such love...

He smiled faintly. I was upon him. My cleaver swung down.

"No!" I screamed, raggedly, my voice broken. 

The Gray One chuckled in my ear, "And now, you will watch him die."

"You won't take him from me!" I could feel my arm, my true arm. I could feel the muscles stretching, sinews pulling. I cared not for what the rest of my body did: I focused everything upon that arm, the one that held the cleaver. It was like trying to stop an automobile driving toward me with my bare hands: the strength behind it was incredibly, unreal. The knot within me was fraying, too tight now. I screamed my throat ragged.

"I won't! Let you! Kill him!" The knot within me burst, and I was filled with such a rush of fury and terror that my every movement became more vicious, more difficult for the Gray One to restrain. That arm was mine, the body was mine! I had to stop...I had to...I wouldn't watch Damian die...

The blade made contact, sunk into his skin. His blood spattered from the force -

But I would not let them cut deeper. I held them at bay, the cleaver trembling in the muscular flesh between his neck and shoulder.

"Get off of me!" Even to my own ears I sounded like an animal, thrashing and snarling, fighting the Gray One and fighting for control, torn between two worlds, my mind unable to truly comprehend any of it. The Gray One began to growl furiously, then to shriek. I could see the lonely world of the demons more clearly for a moment, as the Legion stirred anxiously, watching the Gray One and I grapple. I was aware that somewhere, in some distant world that once I might have called real but now seemed so far, I knew the cleaver I had wielded dropped to the ground. I knew Damian sunk to his knees, a hand clasped to his shoulder, trying to stave off the bleeding. I was aware of him looking at me, smiling weakly, saying, "I knew you were there...I knew it...please fight them...fight them, Samara..."