Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 71 -

Damian

Ash coated every surface of the house like gray snow. Old furniture stood ruined and blackened, rotten specters. The place smelled old and smokey, and sound was muted. Every step Damian took was tempered by the powdery coating underfoot. He spotted Samara's small bootprints leading up the stairs.

He would follow. He would follow her to the ends of the earth.

He didn't dare call her name. The old wood groaned under his feet and with every step he feared it might fall away. But she had run this way, up the stairs and across the wide landing. Rain poured through the caved-in roof, dripping with old branches. He ducked beneath the dribbling waterfall, his eyes trained for any movement.

Caution told him to pull out the pistol, to have it ready in his hands. He had pointed it at her once, and he had taken aim at others far too many times. Not this time. He wouldn't lose her. He repeated it to himself, over and over, as if to convince his own mind it were true.

He wouldn't lose her.

But he was screaming it in the face of doubt.

"Damian..."

Her voice was gentle, almost a whisper. He shouldn't have been able to even hear it over the sound of the rain and groaning of the house. But it was unmistakable. How many times had he heard her whisper his name, just like that - or sleepily in the morning, or exhausted before bed, or heavily in the throes of passion? Her voice, wrapped around those familiar syllables - he paused. His hands were shaking. Fear - no, terror - was creeping up and overtaking him. Fear of what awaited him, fear of the reaper outside, fear of Samara herself. Fear of his Amma's prophecies, her warnings.

But fear didn't matter now, did it?

He crept down the hall, carefully avoiding the places where fire had eaten its way through the floorboards. It wasn't supposed to be this way. All his training told him to wait for help, to not go in unaided, to return to Abraham and see if he was conscious enough to speak. But fate demanded otherwise. He wouldn't turn his back on her, not with the reaper waiting at her door.

At the end of the hall, scorched black double doors stood ajar. He could see her there, crouched at the far side of the room, huddled over, rocking gently. His Samara. She was still there, she had to be. She would fight, she would know his face...

The doors creaked as he pushed them further open, and a cloud of ash puffed into the air. Samara stopped moving.

"Samara, I'm here," he let the authority out in his voice, the tone that had always made her smile, that had comforted her. "You're alright."

"Damian," her voice was pitiful, muffled in her hands. "Damian...please..." She began to sob.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he hurried to her side. She had fought them, she prevailed. He should have known she would...

He reached out a tender hand to grasp her shoulder and help her up. But as her face turned to him, there were no tears there. There was a wide smile, black eyes, and a cleaver gripped in her hand.

"Oh, Damian," she whined, and now her voice was a mockery, growing deeper, darker. "Didn't I tell you not to fucking follow me?"

He barely had time to dodge back, narrowly avoiding the swing of her cleaver. It hissed through the air, inches from his face as he stumbled. She flipped it in her hand and sliced again - a downward arc that could have opened his chest from collarbone to hip. Again he dodged her, still trying to regain his balance, still trying to make himself breath through his mounting panic. Her eyes were black - solid black, emotionless. Nothing human - nothing of the Samara he knew.