Home Sweet Home (mxm)

Chapter 10: Screams From Below

Sasha squeezed Adon's hand reassuringly. 

"But it has to keep feeding off of you to remain in your body. Every day, or sometimes even several times a day, it will have to ingest some part of you." 

Adon looked up at Taylor, honest fear in his eyes. 

"I'm totally cool with getting him out of my body now." 

Sasha pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts. 

"I found a pretty highly rated exorcist who should be able to get ri—" Nikolai appeared suddenly, his translucent hands wrapping around Sasha's neck as he pinned her to the bed with an ear-piercing scream. 

Adon's body jerked with the action, but Nikolai seemed to be locking most of his ability to move, even though his undead form was mostly out of the man's body. 

Taylor hurried forward, since the banshee's strength was definitely not something to joke with, but Martin beat him to the situation. Instead of trying to do anything to Nikolai, the man grabbed Adon's shoulders and yanked him backward, throwing him to the floor a few feet away. Taylor watched as the banshee was forced away, too, since it evidently needed to remain connected to its host in at least one place. 

Nikolai tried to get at Sasha again as he clawed at the floor, growling, but he couldn't drag Adon more than a few inches at a time with the man resisting. 

Martin abruptly sat down and took out a long string of beads from his pocket. Taylor was about to ask him what he was doing, but as soon as the man started chanting something, he shut up. 

Nikolai started panting, making both Taylor and Sasha stare at him in confusion. 

"He needs to breathe?" she asked at the same time Taylor took a hesitant step forward. 

"Yeah," he whispered as he watched Nikolai tuck his head and roll over onto his side, then reach up to claw at his own neck. 

He did no damage, of course, since he didn't have a real body, but it was clear that he was struggling to breathe... and actually needed to. 

"I-I think you're going to kill him," Adon said as he raised a hand to his forehead and winced, clearly affected by the assault on the banshee. 

"He's panicking. He doesn't want to die again." 

Martin grunted as the beads in his hands began to glow faintly. 

"This is the only way I can kill a banshee. I'm not really cutting off his oxygen, but I'm making him think that I am. His mind is responding to that, making him unable to process the oxygen he really does have available." 

So he can really die permanently this way? He will actually die if he's suffocated by what Martin is doing? 

"Don't worry, Tay, Adon will be fine, and he'll get his body back," Sasha said. 

Taylor was about to reply when he heard a deep, groaning sound as the floor beneath his feet began to shake. 

An... earthquake? 

"Shit! Get out of the r—" before Adon could finish his sentence everything in the room, including the bed, boxes, and people, began dropping through the floor. 

Taylor stumbled backward just in time to avoid falling with the others. His eyes couldn't comprehend what was actually happening, but when he started to hear sounds downstairs, he hurried toward the opening in the wall. 

He carefully started to ascend the stairs, looking around as he made his way down. The first person he saw was Adon, who was slowly rolling over onto his stomach, struggling to push himself up.