Belatedly, I saw the Taser he’d been concealing by holding it slightly behind his leg.

“Get down!” Raphael bellowed, and for once, I followed orders without hesitation. I was about halfway between Brewster and Raphael, and from my vantage point on the floor, I had a decent view of the showdown.

Raphael drew his gun as Brewster raised the Taser. Raphael was just a hair faster, and for the second time tonight, the sound of a gunshot split the air. The bullet slammed into Brewster’s forehead. There was a squirt of blood as a small, circular hole appeared right in the center of his forehead. He grunted in pain, but didn’t immediately crumple to the floor as he should have.

Brewster blinked a couple of times. From upstairs, I could hear the renewed screams of the children, and I hoped like hell that Claudia was staying up there with them, protecting them. Surely she wasn’t the kind of heroic fool who would come running toward the sound of gunshots!

I was still waiting for Brewster to collapse, but he just stood there blinking. Raphael, still pointing the gun in Brewster’s direction, reached my side and hauled me to my feet. Neither one of us took our eyes off of Brewster, and we both gasped when the edges of that hole in his forehead pulled toward each other and then knitted together.

“Oh shit,” Raphael said, which I thought was the understatement of the century.

Raphael got off another perfect shot, but this time Brewster didn’t let a little thing like a bullet wound to his head distract him. The Taser popped, the probes digging squarely into Raphael’s chest. Raphael went down with a choked cry of pain.

Brewster and I faced each other. He ejected the cartridge from his Taser, but didn’t seem to have another one handy. Not that that would be much of an inconvenience for him. I’m sure he Tasered Raphael because he wanted to preserve Tommy’s precious body. He had no reason to do the same for me. He also didn’t need a weapon to break me in half, so I couldn’t take any comfort from the fact that his Taser was empty.

Pain stabbed through my eye. Lugh, trying to take control again.

Wait, I ordered him. Imagine, me giving orders to the demon king!

But—

Wait, I repeated. I’ll let you in if I need you, but I’d rather keep you hidden if I don’t.

He could have tried the same argument Raphael had used on me in the car, could have tried to convince me that if I waited until I needed him, it would be too late. But that argument didn’t fly, and he must have known it. If I could voluntarily let him in right this moment, then I could voluntarily let him in when I determined once and for all that I needed him.

Brewster took a couple of steps down the stairs. I could still hear the children crying, and I realized that whatever was going to happen, I had to get Brewster out of this house before Claudia couldn’t stand it anymore and had to investigate. Or before Brewster realized he could use those kids as hostages against me, just as his “friends” had.

So, I did what many would agree was the most sensible thing at a time like this: I ran like hell.

Demons have superhuman strength and agility, and they’re able to control their host’s bodies well enough to run with great efficiency. However, the human body has its limits, and an experienced human runner can actually outrun a demon in an untrained body, for a time, at least.

I wasn’t a trained runner, but I was naturally athletic and had long legs, so I was out the front door with a bit of a lead. My lead improved when Brewster made an ill-advised attempt to tackle me. I dodged and pulled farther ahead when he belly-flopped onto the driveway.

Raphael had the car keys, so if I was going to escape Brewster, I was going to have to do it on foot. I briefly wondered if I was better off trying to attract attention by going for the main road and flagging down passing cars, or avoiding attention by running through darkened backyards.

I didn’t know what Brewster’s story was, didn’t know how he’d come to be possessed, didn’t know why he’d been able to heal a bullet wound to the head as if it were no more than a minor inconvenience, but I didn’t want to risk innocent passersby being hurt by him in a fight, so I chose the darkened backyard option.

Being past the Main Line, we weren’t in the city proper, but we weren’t exactly in the country, either, so there was plenty of light to see by, even in the semi-wooded backyards of the wealthy.

I sprinted across a beautifully maintained lawn that could have been plucked straight from the fairway of a golf course, and had just enough light to see and jump over the croquet wicket that jutted from the grass. Behind me, I could hear Brewster’s heavy footfalls as he relentlessly pursued.

The coast ahead of me looked pretty clear for a stretch, so I diverted a little of my attention to grabbing and arming my Taser. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a spare cartridge on me, but the Taser could still work like a stun gun if this came down to hand-to-hand combat. I didn’t really want Brewster to get close enough to me for me to use the Taser, but though I could outrun him in the short term, his demon would give him more stamina than I had on my own.

Let me in, Lugh urged.

Not yet, I said again. I trusted you enough to leave you in control before. Now it’s your turn to trust me.

I didn’t think he liked it much, but Lugh didn’t try to take over by force.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Brewster was catching up. I guess I was starting to slow down, though I was still running as fast as I could. My breath burned in my throat and chest, and my heart slammed against my rib cage.

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.