Immortal Sea (38 page)

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.”

“
When
,” not “
if
.” Progress, Morgan thought. His Elizabeth was getting her bearings again and her confidence. He was glad.

He nodded.

Throughout the morning, people came and went, Nancy from the front desk, the dour female mayor, the woman who sold Elizabeth her house. Morgan listened as Elizabeth offered explanations, reassurances, lies, watching each effort deplete her resources a little further, increasingly annoyed on her behalf.

“. . . drug usually used to treat seizures . . . didn’t realize until he fell and cracked his jaw on the coffee table . . . Thank you, I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Dylan and Caleb pieced together a full report, augmented by their own suspicions and speculations.

“So this demon possessed Zack when he left the beach last night,” the police chief said. “Used the boy’s energy to free himself.”

Dylan nodded. “And used his body to get through the island’s wards.”

The brothers exchanged a look.

“We’ll need to run by the island and check the orb,” Caleb said. “Confirm the demon really was Tan.”

“He could have been acting as an agent of Gau,” Dylan said.

Caleb shook his head. “More likely, he saw an opportunity and took it.”

“We don’t know how well the demons communicate. If—”

“Enough,” Morgan interrupted suddenly, roughly.

The Hunter brothers glanced at him, surprised.

“Elizabeth doesn’t need to be bothered with this now, in our son’s sickroom. I will speak with you tonight. Or tomorrow. Right now, Zachary needs quiet. And Elizabeth needs a break.”

“Well.” She studied him when they were gone, a smile tugging the corner of her mouth. “That was forceful.”

Morgan scowled, aware she was about to scold him for treating her as the . . . what was it? Oh, yes, a weak and pampered woman in need of his protection.

“Thank you.” She put her arms around him and held him, just held on. She sighed, her head fitting in the hollow of his chest, their bodies perfectly aligned.

It felt good.

It felt like home.

He stroked his hands lightly up and down her back, tipped back her head. She smiled up at him mistily.

“Go,” he ordered gently. “Wash your face, catch your breath, get a cup of coffee.”

Her smile trembled. “I do need to use the bathroom.”

“Then go. I will stay.”

He watched her leave the room, his heart so huge he thought it would burst the bounds of his chest.

I will always stay,
he thought.

He turned and saw their son watching from beneath half-closed eyes.

“I really screwed up, didn’t I.” The boy’s voice rasped. It wasn’t a question.

Morgan was surprised. “You were unprepared. This is my fault, not yours.”

“I let him take me.”

So he did remember, Morgan thought with a flash of pity. “You fought.”

“I didn’t win.”

Morgan chose his words with care. Zachary was still fragile. He needed reassurance. But he deserved the truth. “Sometimes the victory is in holding on.” To a woman, he thought. Two children. A life. “You remembered who you are. You did not let Tan touch your mother. You resisted. You were strong.” Morgan was forced to clear his throat. “I am proud of you.”

Zachary’s pale face colored to the roots of his hair. He smiled crookedly. “Gee, thanks, Dad.”

Not a hook, Morgan thought dizzily. A harpoon, straight through the heart.
“Congratulations, you have a son
.
”

He went to the bed and awkwardly, for the first time, squeezed Zachary’s hand. The boy turned his palm over and clung.

He heard a sound behind them. Elizabeth, standing in the doorway, her eyes shining with joy and tears.

“If you’re both feeling better now,” she said, “we should think about going home.”

MORGAN OF THE FINFOLK STOOD BEFORE A PILLAR at the front of the small church, chafing against impatience and his suddenly tight collar. Zachary, beside him, wore the formal clothing with awkward dignity, the dark suit setting off the pale glitter of his newly shorn hair. Stephanie, sitting several rows back, kept glancing at Zachary as if she barely recognized him.

“The whole island must be here,” Conn murmured on Morgan’s other side.

Morgan stirred restively. As long as Elizabeth showed up soon, he hardly cared who was in attendance. But he was pleased for her sake that her parents had come, that the community she longed for had embraced her.

And he was glad, after all, to have their son standing with him. To feel the press of angels as even the children of air blessed this celebration. To see Dylan waiting with Nick in the front pew, daughter Grace gripping his thumbs as she practiced standing on his lap. Margred, Caleb, and their newborn son occupied the row behind with Lucy.

“We are honored by your presence, lord,” he said to Conn.

“Lucy was glad for an excuse to see her family and meet her new nephew.” Conn’s gaze rested briefly on his consort, his silver eyes inscrutable. “She talks much of weddings these days.”

To Morgan’s knowledge, the selkie prince and the
targair inghean
had never wed. The children of the sea did not require the sacraments of men. But in this moment, waiting at the front of the church for Elizabeth, Morgan understood the importance of the promise made before God and witnesses.

He shifted his weight, his eyes still focused on the church doors. “I thought you might have come to remind me of my duty.”

“Your duty is here,” Conn said.

Morgan’s attention was diverted from the back of the church. “Not on Sanctuary?”

“Griff has the work of rebuilding in hand. Lucy was able to use her power to relieve many of your people, and I have released others from my service.”

Morgan felt as if a fist had been released in the center of his chest. “Then you have no objection if I stay.”

“Hardly.” Conn smiled thinly. “Why do you think I left you behind when Lucy and I returned to Sanctuary?”

Morgan frowned. “To recover from the crossing.”

“I am not so tenderhearted,” Conn said. “Dylan needs you here. I want you here. One warden is not enough to guard the next generation.”

The next generation. “
Hope for the future
,” Conn had called them. Dylan’s child. Margred’s child.