mountains no longer in view, Christmas lights strung up all across the tops of buildings in an array of twinkling colors, stars doing their best to compete with the ambient light.
Night already?
That reality jerked him out of the fantasy he’d allowed himself to stray into.
Dammit. They’d been in Hazah’s lessons too long. His people—
“Something’s wrong,” Delilah said, urgency in her voice.
“Wrong?” he asked. “How?”
“This isn’t—” She shook her head. “This doesn’t feel the same. Like it’s not part of the visions, or it’s warped somehow. Can’t you feel it?”
Alasdair focused his senses outward, frowning. She was right. The air felt…damp, heavy here in a way it hadn’t anywhere else in the memories they’d been sent to witness.
“You certainly took your sweet time.” An odd voice sounded from the darkness, similar to the dark rumble of a dragon shifter. By the windows, the shadows twitched. Then twitched again until the darkness seemed to writhe as a form appeared and solidified.
A man, or something the shape of a man, stepped into the soft glow of the lamp on the corner of Delilah’s desk.
Demon.
Not one inhabiting a human body. It was beautiful in a way most humans couldn’t stand to be around, driven to heights of jealousy by features both bold and perfectly balanced. The ultimate physical specimen. Except for the pitch-black eyes.
“This is not good,” Delilah whispered as she inched closer to him. A rare display of apprehension?
“How?”
“I think he’s actually here with us,” she whispered.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
The demon suddenly smiled, razor-sharp teeth on display. “Are you sure?” it asked.
Fuck. Visions weren’t supposed to respond to them, were they? Maybe they were doing that “in body” thing again?
Black eyes glinted in the lamplight. “I must thank Semhazah for this,” the demon murmured. Almost conversationally. “It took a little work, but trapping you without the ability to fight me was just the opportunity I’ve been looking for.”
It looked at him as it said the last.
Alasdair flung his arms wide, palms spread, willing his power to manifest, ready to hurl a lightning bolt at the thing. Only…nothing came.
Not a spark or a fizz. Impotence wasn’t a feeling he’d ever had to deal with before this disaster of a day. Not even the night he’d had to kill his father.
The demon’s smile echoed the seven hells, terrifying and fascinating at the same time.
All the thing needed to do was touch one of them and it could seize their body…but also control their gifts, once released to the real world. Exactly why anyone with magical powers kept up wards to prevent possession. But without his magic, he was vulnerable.
So was Delilah.
The gut-level instinct to protect had him stepping in front of her, shielding her with his body. Almost as though that move pulled the trigger on a gun, the demon surged across the room. Powerful as fuck and coming right at him. Alasdair braced himself one second, only to have Delilah shove him hard the next. Not expecting the attack from behind, he stumbled to the side and she jumped between him and the demon.
“No!” he shouted, reaching out. A useless gesture.
The fear—not for himself, but for her—that slammed through him came with a labyrinth of rage and shock that this thing dared to threaten her. That he could do nothing to stop it. Nothing to protect her in this moment. That he might have to kill her, too, if it took hold of her.
The demon clamped a hand around her arm and Alasdair expected screaming, or sizzling, or for the thing to turn into black smoke and enter her body through her nostrils. Or something. He’d never witnessed a possession as it happened. Not even his father’s.
But, like with his powers a second ago, nothing happened.
The demon frowned, adjusted its grip, confusion rippling across its features. “What are you?” it hissed at Delilah.
“I—”
Its eyes grew wider, and somehow, impossibly blacker. “I know you. You’re the woman who killed my windigo.”
“Let go of her, Belial,” a female voice sounded from behind it.
Hazah was here? She knew this demon?
Her colorful caftan flowed out behind her as though wind whipped around her despite being indoors. She stared down the creature still latched onto Delilah, who stood eerily still, never removing her gaze from the thing. Hazah, meanwhile, seemed to morph before his eyes. No longer the siren of a woman he’d met earlier today. This was a warrior—fierce, deadly, and pissed. Anger crackled in the air around her.
Heels and all, Delilah took the demon by surprise