Something was wrong. The body he inhabited was sluggish. Clumsy. Unresponsive. Tan felt dizzy. Weak. Horrified, he felt
his host‟s breath begin to seize, his heart begin to slow.
“You have five minutes,” Morgan said in the boy‟s ear. “For the drug to take full effect, before this body is useless to you.
Will you stay with it and die?”
He was bluffing, Tan thought frantically. He must be bluffing. He would not sacrifice his own son.
“I hate this,” the woman sobbed. “I hate . . .”
You.
Morgan raised his head to look at her, Hell in his eyes. “I should have kept you safe. I should have kept both of you safe.”
Tan wavered. Was it possible? No, it couldn‟t be. But the boy‟s body was fading, failing him. He could not breathe. He
needed air.
Morgan leaned harder. The boy‟s lungs compressed. Spots danced in the demon‟s blurring vision. His energy flickered.
“Will you come out, Tan?” Morgan taunted. “Will you come out and fight?”
Cold sweat beaded on Morgan‟s brow. Beneath him, the demon stared out of Zachary‟s eyes, a feverish, rabid glow.
Morgan increased his pressure on the boy‟s ribcage, praying he did not crack a rib, expelling a puff of breath that brushed
his cheek like smoke.
And then Zack convulsed and vomited Tan out in a column of flame.
The demon erupted in a blaze of defiance, a fire of hate, leaping for the ceiling, reaching for the door.
Triumph seared Morgan. Heat singed his face, his chest, his arms.
He battled back with cold fury, calling the wind to seal the windows, to shut the door, containing the demon, closing him
in. With grim purpose, Morgan summoned the smothering weight of magic. Power rose in him, smooth and high and hard as a
wave, a great surge of power fueled by love and rage. It gathered inside him, churned inside him, towered inside him, taller
than the demon‟s fire.
He directed the wall of magic down, crashing down on the cowering flame. “Tan, I extinguish you!”
And the demon snuffed out.
Morgan‟s heart pounded. Zachary lay abandoned, twisted on the floor. Fear wrenched Morgan‟s chest. This did not feel
like victory. Elizabeth‟s protest seared his memory. “Then Zack will die . ”
But her use of the drug had deceived the demon. Zachary was heavily sedated. Unconscious, but alive. And Elizabeth was
already scrambling forward, falling on her knees at their son‟s head, her black kit open by her side.
Morgan stood, watching helplessly, as she grabbed a pillow from the couch and bunched it under the boy‟s neck. She
straightened his head, tilted his chin.
“It‟ll be okay,” she crooned, promised, exhorted. To which one of them? “You‟ll be okay. You just need a little help
breathing until this wears off.”
She ripped an angled tube like a blade from its plastic sheath. Morgan winced as she wedged the boy‟s mouth open and
slowly, smoothly slid the tube past his tongue and down his throat.
“Call Caleb,” she ordered. Tears streaked her face, but her eyes never left their son. With deft, sure hands, she attached a
bag to the tube protruding from Zachary‟s mouth. “He‟s going to need a stretcher.”
Zack needed more than a stretcher. Phenobarbital caused a depression of the body‟s central and peripheral nervous
systems, slowing the body‟s functions, including the electrical activity of the brain.
Elizabeth shivered, leaning her head against the back of her chair, exhaustion pounding in her temples, guilt like a stone in
her chest.
There was no antidote for barbiturate poisoning. Until Zack‟s body rid itself of the drug, his airway needed to be
maintained by mechanical ventilation.
He lay motionless on a clinic bed, clear tubes in his arm and down his throat, machines monitoring his blood pressure, heart
rate, oxygen, and respiration.
Dawn crept around the edges of the blinds, gray and cold.
He still hadn‟t regained consciousness.
“Regina is taking Emily to camp.” Morgan spoke from the door of the examination room. “She will pick her up, too, if