“Zachary?”
The living room was empty. The downstairs was quiet. If Zack were home, where was Morgan?
She set her medical bag in the hall, hanging her purse over the banister. The house was too warm, as if someone had fiddled with the thermostat.
“Zack!” She pitched her voice to carry up the stairs. “I want to talk to you.”
No answer. He must be listening to his iPod.
Annoyed, she started up the stairs. He was fifteen and finfolk. He still had to follow the rules.
Sure, this was Maine. They had one of the lowest crime rates in the country. But he shouldn’t be up in his room with the door unlocked. Anyone could walk right in.
His bedroom door was closed. She tapped. “Zack?”
“Don’t come in.” His voice was strained. Urgent.
What was he doing in there?
She grimaced. Okay, she could think of several things a fifteen-year-old could be doing alone in his room that he might not want his mother to see.
“Honey, we need to talk.”
“No.” He sounded really upset, almost as if he’d been crying.
She leaned closer to the door. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
Maybe he was sick. Maybe . . . “I’m coming in,” she warned and opened the door.
Zack huddled in the narrow space between his bed and the wall, curled in a tight ball, his arms wrapped around his knees. Concern clutched her heart. His face was flushed, his eyes fever bright and miserable.
She started across the room toward him. “Zack, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Stay away.”
She heard a sound—the front door opening?—from downstairs, but her attention was on her son.
“Do you have a fever?” She reached to brush a hand over his forehead the way she had a thousand times during his childhood.
He jerked his head away. “Don’t touch me!”
“Zack.” She stared at him, shocked, dismayed. “What’s the matter with you? Did you take something? Did someone give you something?”
“He has been possessed,” Morgan said grimly from the doorway. “By the demon Tan.”
20
ZACK WANTED TO HOWL. IT WASN’T RIGHT, IT wasn’t fair, Morgan wasn’t supposed to be here, he would tell her everything, he was ruining everything . . .
He gripped his head, fighting the pain, struggling for control of his own brain. No, that wasn’t right, Morgan was his father, he was supposed to make things better, he was trying to help.
“What happened?” the woman—his mother—asked. “When did you get here?”
“I tracked them from the beach,” Morgan said. “Zachary and the other.”
Fishy bastard. The wave of rage burned Zack’s throat until he nearly puked. If Morgan hadn’t shown up, none of this would have happened, everything would be all right.
One heart. One pulse.
Two minds.
He struggled for control.
“What other?” The woman turned to him. “Zack? What’s going on?”
She was killing him with her questions. She was wearing her fake, everything’s-fine doctor face, but her eyes were wide and worried. Scared. He liked that. He liked scaring her.
Zack shuddered. No, he didn’t.
“Don’t want . . .” He choked the words past the constriction of his lungs, the searing in his throat. “To hurt.”
“It’s okay, honey. We’ll take care of you,” she said.
“We’ll take care of everything.”
Stupid. She was stupid. She didn’t understand.
Stop. Zack tried again, wresting another tiny victory from the demon. “Don’t want to hurt . . . anybody.”
Morgan said, “You won’t.”
Hate him. Hate him. Hate.
Zack hissed in pain.
Just for fun, the demon rolled his eyes back in his head and growled. “Fuck off, fish face. I’ll suck your bones.”
The woman gasped. Even Morgan, the big bad demon hunter of the deep, looked shaken. The demon laughed, hot energy spurting through him. It was good to be free. Three long years in the damp and the cold and the dark . . .
Tan wished he could stay long enough to enjoy himself, to feed on the pain of the human woman, to drink her despair. But his freedom was more important than his revenge. He must not underestimate his foe.
Margred, the sea bitch, had entrapped him.
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 bash
ed her head in with a table leg.”
Liz drew a shaky breath. And realized what she had to do.
The latex ties dug into his wrists. The damn things would not tear. Tan was forced to dislocate the boy’s shoulder simply so he could reach the ties with his teeth. In a captive corner of his mind, he heard Zack’s guttural sobs, but pain to his host did not bother the demon. He gnawed through the bindings on one wrist and then, with his arms free, snapped the joint back into place with a sickening crunch. Tan did not know how long he would inhabit this body, and he wanted to keep it functional. His to command, his own little finfolk lordling.
Wouldn’t that annoy Morgan. The thought made Tan smile even as the one inside him fought his control.
But first they must get away.
Tan could hear the warden’s voice through the white paneled door, and the woman, arguing. Deciding what to do about their precious son, no doubt.
Tan twitched sinew and muscle, forcing the boy’s cooperation as he bent to release his ankles. The clumsiness of his injured arm made the demon hiss in irritation. Perhaps he would find another body after all. Plenty to choose from, once he was free. He would quite enjoy . . . sampling. The demon had old scores to settle on this island, if he could get around the pesky wards. And that girl, the one who occupied so many of the boy’s thoughts, seemed appetizing. Tan would have her, one way or the other.
The door swung open. Morgan.
And the woman, but she was human. Female. No threat at all.
Tan jerked the boy to his feet. The warden worried Tan. But Morgan would be hampered by his concern for Zack. The demon had no such handicap. “You should have tied me tighter, fishface.”
Morgan prowled forward without answering.
Tan frowned. He needed a distraction.
He saw the woman, scurrying behind Morgan, reaching for the soft black bag on the floor of the hall. She did not look at him. He did not want her in the hall. She was in his way.
The demon grinned and ran his tongue over his borrowed teeth, riffling quickly through his host’s memories. “Mommy, he hurt me,” he said in the voice of four-year-old Zack.
The woman stiffened. Morgan circled closer. Tan edged away.
“Help me,” he called like a lost child. “Help me, Mommy.”
For a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut, as if in pain. Stupid bitch. Taking advantage of her blindness, Tan sprang, quick as a fish in his borrowed body.
But Morgan rushed them, whump, hard, slamming Tan/Zack brutally to the floor. The demon overcame his shock, the pain, wresting control as they slithered, scrambled, rolled across the living room. Morgan grabbed him, wrapping them in his brute arms. Tan snapped at his wrist, spat in his face.
“You can’t hurt me,” he taunted. “Not without hurting your spawn.”
“I do not intend to hurt you,” Morgan said, curiously calm.
Tan exerted himself, wriggling furiously to get away. The body he inhabited was almost a match for the warden’s. The boy had inherited his sire’s height. But the warden had weight on his side.
“And you can’t end me,” Tan said breathlessly. “So you might as well let me go.”
“No, I can’t end you,” Morgan said. “But she can.”
“She . . .” Tan twisted the boy’s head to see.
It was the damn woman, approaching with a syringe in her hand. Bitch, bitch, bitch.
Tan bucked and writhed. Betrayal burst from deep within him. “Mommy, no! Mommy, don’t hurt me!”
Tears ran down her face. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “But it’s for the best.”
The demon howled in disbelief as she leaned over them, jabbing the needle deep into his arm. “Murderer! Murderer! Bitch!”
She squeezed the plunger. Tan tried to reach her, to punish her, to possess her, but she stumbled back, weeping, and Morgan grabbed him tight. They rolled, thrashing, across the floor, crashing into the coffee table, Morgan on top. Morgan was crushing the boy’s chest. He needed air.
Tan needed air.
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 necessary.”
If Zack didn’t improve. If he didn’t wake up.
Liz closed her eyes, sick at heart.
“That’s quite a bump on his jaw,” Morgan remarked. Liz opened her eyes. He stood over their son’s bedside, surveying the damage. “Will he remember I hit him when he wakes up?”
Liz roused herself to answer. “He may. He might not. Phenobarbital can affect short-term memory.” She shuddered, reliving the moment when she’d stuck him with the drug. “Mommy, don’t hurt me.” “I hope he forgets,” she said passionately.
“You did what you must to deceive the demon,” Morgan said, reading her thoughts with surprising accuracy. “Tan would have killed him and destroyed his soul in the process. You saved him. You saved our son. No one else could have done what you did.”
Liz had stood vigil at many bedsides, comforting and reassuring. She was the doctor, the expert, the person patients and family could turn to for guidance. For answers.
But with Morgan, she could be the one to ask. She held his gaze, sharing her deepest fear. “What if he doesn’t make it?”
Morgan took her hand. “He will make it. We will make it.” He sat on the arm of her chair, holding their clasped hands together on his thigh, his touch warm. Reassuring. Strong. “I love you, Elizabeth.”
His words seeped into her, rain to her parched and worried heart.
“I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”
They sat together quietly, hands joined, while the sun slowly suffused the room with gold and the machines whispered and beeped for the child on the bed.
Coming together.
Making it through.
Believing that somehow everything would be all right.
Believing in love.
After twelve hours, Zachary began breathing strongly on his own. Morgan gagged reflexively as Elizabeth removed the tube from their son’s throat.
She looked up, her smile sympathetic, her eyes tired and strained. “I’m glad I can do this while he’s still unconscious. He’ll have a hell of a sore throat when he wakes up.”
Immortal Sea Page 25
