Morgan, the warden, had the power to destroy him.
Tan forced the boy‟s reluctant limbs to uncurl, jerking his captive body to its feet like a marionette on wires. His borrowed
eyes shifted from window to door and back again. He needed to be free. He needed to escape. Morgan would end him
otherwise.
But . . .
Morgan would not be so quick to end his son. This body was Zack‟s body, the warden‟s seed, his legacy.
Tan‟s hostage.
The demon eyed the window again, balancing on his borrowed feet, gauging the distance and his chances.
Morgan slid forward into the room, putting the woman behind him. Seeing his opportunity, the demon sprang. But at the
last second, the boy refused to cooperate, dragging his feet, throwing his arms wide, fingers scrabbling for the window frame,
crying in fear.
“No! I‟ll fall!” Zack shouted.
Tan screamed in frustration, punishing the boy‟s disobedience, pouring fire along nerves and sinews, forcing him to release
his grip. Too late.
He stumbled.
Morgan seized him from behind and whirled him around. Pain cracked Tan‟s jaw, knocked his head back.
He felt his host body sinking, felt unconsciousness reach and wrap him, trapping him in a useless shell.
Nononononooo . . .
It was so unfair.
Liz pleated her fingers together in her lap, trying to stop their shaking, struggling for calm in a situation in which she had
no control.
Her son, her boy, her baby Zack, was in the grip of a demon. And she didn‟t know how to fight it. How to defeat it. How to
fix this.
Morgan paced the kitchen, strong and vital and violent. Her eyes followed him.
She had faith in him. She had to have faith in him. The only alternative was despair.
“How long do we have?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice steady, to think past her terror.
Morgan‟s mouth compressed. “Perhaps five minutes until he regains consciousness. The bonds may buy us a little more
time.”
The bonds. She winced.
Morgan had tied up her son, their son, with latex tourniquets from her medical bag. Zack was lying trussed in the living
room like a mental patient or a prisoner. Zack and Not Zack. She shivered.
Even bound, Morgan hadn‟t trusted him alone upstairs. He didn‟t trust him in the same room either.
“The demon must not touch you,” he had explained when he carried Zack‟s prone body to the couch.
She‟d looked at her son, helpless even to smooth the hair that had fallen across his white face. A purpling shadow rose on
his jaw. “Why not?”
“Tan could possess you next.”
She had flinched, her face stiff, her heart numb with fear.
But her mind refused to rest.
“We can‟t leave him tied up indefinitely,” she said. Calm, when she felt like screaming. “What are you going to do?”
Morgan turned to face her, every movement taut with leashed frustration. “The demon is fire. He needs air to survive. If the
demon‟s air is cut off, he will die.”
Shock held her still. Her heart pounded. “Then so will Zack.”
Morgan met her eyes. “Yes.”
A single word, sharp and solid as an axe. It cleaved her heart in two.
No. She was a doctor. Zack‟s mother, for God‟s sake. Think. There had been that other doctor, the one who lived here
before. The possessed one. What had Morgan said? “When a demon will not exit its host, the only recourse is to rend its
victim’s body uninhabitable . . . Regina bashed her head in with a table leg . ”