The next yard I tried to cross had motion-sensing lights that came blazing to life as soon as I set foot on the lawn. Worse, there were lights on in the house, which meant someone might look out to see what had activated the sensor in the yard. I was still worried about innocent bystanders—or overprotective landowners, as the case might be—so instead of continuing my sprint across the lawn, I veered toward the patch of overgrown woods that edged the property.
The lights of the backyard had killed my night vision, so the moment I plunged into the trees, I felt like I’d gone blind. Which really sucked, because I wasn’t kidding when I said the woods were overgrown. I hadn’t taken two steps before my feet tangled with some particularly aggressive underbrush and I crashed to the ground.
Somehow, I managed to keep hold of the Taser, and without even thinking about it, I rolled violently to my right, just avoiding Brewster’s next pounce. I hoped his night vision was as impaired as my own. If he couldn’t see the Taser, which I was doing my best to conceal, then I might be able to take him by surprise.
I came to a painful stop against a fallen tree, its bark soft and crumbly with rot. I was probably acquiring all kinds of hitchhiking nightlife.
I squinted in the darkness. My eyes were beginning to adjust, and I could see Brewster’s silhouette as he pushed to his feet, about five yards away from me.
I sucked in as much air as I could, and for the first time, I could hear something other than the pounding of my heart and the thud of pursuing footsteps: barking dogs. Loud barking dogs. As in, barking dogs that had probably just been let out of Overprotective Landowner’s house and were now on their way to deal with the trespassers.
Brewster didn’t seem to care about the dogs. He started coming toward me, slowly, stalking, ready for me to leap to my feet and make another run for it.
If he jumps you, he could break your neck before you even have a chance to pull the trigger on the Taser, Lugh said, his voice urgent in my head.
I knew he was right. But if I moved with demon quickness to avoid the strike, then we could end up sending Brewster’s demon back to Hell—okay, the Demon Realm, but right now Hell sounded like a better option—with the knowledge that I wasn’t alone in my body. Unacceptable.
The obvious conclusion was that I couldn’t let him jump on me. I could try to dodge, but if this ended up taking too much longer, those dogs would make an appearance, and I didn’t think I needed any more complications.
So I did the one thing Brewster couldn’t possibly expect from a human woman who’d been fleeing from him in apparent terror. I attacked.
With a battle cry to give me courage, I launched myself at him, Taser held before me, finger squeezing the trigger even before I made contact. He almost reacted in time, almost managed to grab hold of my arm before I shoved a fistful of Taser in his belly. But you know what they say about horseshoes and hand grenades. .
Brewster collapsed into a pile of what I hoped was poison ivy—not that I could see diddly squat—just as two large, snarling masses of fur and teeth burst through the bushes.
I was out of breath and overloaded with adrenaline, and my Taser was running low on battery power. Plus, I wasn’t in the mood to be mauled. So with only the briefest of efforts, I let Lugh take control.
Don’t you dare hurt those dogs, I warned. They’re just doing their job.
But apparently, their job involved a whole lot of intimidation and not much else. Instead of leaping for me and going for my jugular, they merely came to a stop and stood there between me and their home, teeth bared, neck fur ruffled, very intimidating snarls rising from their throats.
Moving slowly, keeping a wary eye on the dogs, which now that my eyes had finally adjusted all the way to the darkness I could see were a pair of German shepherds, Lugh bent to pick up Brewster’s limp body. The dogs snarled a little louder, but still refrained from attacking. In the background, I could hear a man’s voice calling to them, asking them what they’d found. I laughed to myself. Did the guy expect them to answer?
Backing away carefully and quietly, Lugh carried Brewster deeper into the weed-choked patch of woods, and the dogs didn’t follow.
CHAPTER 29
I wanted to take control back immediately, but Lugh pointed out that I wasn’t strong enough to lug Brewster all the way back to the house, and I had to concede the point. To our mutual surprise, we ran into Raphael when we were less than halfway back.
While the chase and the final confrontation had felt like it had taken hours, I doubted more than about five or ten minutes had passed since I’d started running for it. Raphael should still be curled into a quivering ball on the Brewsters’ floor, not practically colliding with Lugh and me in the woods.
Lugh apparently came to the same conclusion. He dropped Brewster’s body and put his fists on his hips. The gesture was so typical of me I had to laugh. Of course, I didn’t laugh, because I wasn’t driving and couldn’t.
“You have some explaining to do, brother,” Lugh said.
“Not now,” Raphael answered with a negligent wave of his hand. “We’ve got other things to worry about at the moment.” He dropped to his knees beside Brewster. “I gather you Tasered him?” he asked, then continued without waiting for an answer. “It won’t hold him very long, and, as you might have noticed, he’s a bit hard to kill.”
He grabbed Brewster and rolled him over onto his stomach, pinning his arms behind his back, though at this moment Brewster couldn’t put up a fight.
“Morgan, you need to exorcize him, fast.” He gave me a pointed look, which I interpreted as “Don’t let on you’re not Morgan at the moment, even if you did just call me ‘brother.’”
I wanted answers to my questions as badly as Lugh did, but Raphael was right. I might be able to get one more effective jolt out of my Taser before the battery died, but it wouldn’t hold Brewster for long.
Lugh seamlessly slid into the background. I was back in control, but I didn’t feel too hot. Maybe it was all that running, maybe it was the fading adrenaline high. . I didn’t know what was wrong, but my knees felt weak, my stomach twisted unhappily, and my head ached. Not the ice-pick-in-the-eye sensation that was Lugh trying to take control, but an allover pounding that felt almost like a hangover.
Now wasn’t the time to moan about feeling sick, though. We had to get rid of the demon that had possessed Devon Brewster III before he became a danger once again. I sat on the ground in front of Brewster—an act for which my weak knees thanked me—and closed my eyes.
It was hard to concentrate on anything but the queasiness and the pounding in my head, but I tried to reproduce the calm, tranquil trance state I’d achieved in Tommy’s car despite all the nerves that had troubled me. My gorge rose, and I had all I could handle trying to fight it down.
“Hurry up!” Raphael urged, and I wanted to give him a swift kick in the ass. Putting more pressure on me wasn’t going to make relaxing any easier.
I almost blurted out that he should do it himself if he was in such a hurry, but remembered just in time that humans weren’t supposed to know demons could perform exorcisms. I didn’t know what Brewster’s demon might make of my forbidden knowledge, but I didn’t want to find out.
I could hear Brewster starting to struggle. Weakly, to be sure, but he wouldn’t stay weak much longer. I had to fight past the sickness and get this done.
When I managed to conjure the scent of vanilla in my mind, I almost hurled. Food smells and queasy stomachs don’t go well together. I was on the verge of panicking, when Lugh said, Here, let me, and took control of me for the third time this evening.
Instantly, my body steadied, and strength returned. Lugh mimicked my ritual with no trouble, and he was more than powerful enough to cast the demon from Brewster’s body. He put me back in control as soon as he was done.