He could see Pat raising her hand to keep the others from speaking, from interrupting his concentration. And even though Wheeler was seething, Danny could see how he controlled himself and did not keep on acting out his anger and hurt. He just waited, as the Sutahites kept trying to entice him to act in a destructive way.

So Wheeler did have the power to resist them, when he had a stronger desire for something else. The desire to see what Danny was going to do.

What Danny did was invite the Sutahites to come to him. He was afraid that he might be repeating his mistake of inviting Set to come into him, but no. He wasn’t asking them to enter him, to enter his body. He was asking them to attach themselves to his ka, as if they were becoming his gates.

But not his gates. He couldn’t “make” them as gates because they didn’t know how. They were lawless. They didn’t know how to do anything except move to him, attach to him.

He could feel them coming. It wasn’t hard to lure them away from Wheeler. None of them had a very strong will of its own. Danny’s own ka was so strong, so … charismatic?… that they could hardly resist the invitation, if in fact any of them tried.

When they attached to him, he could sense them like a distant clamor of voices, like a crowd moving through a street on the other side of a large building. It wasn’t words, really. They had learned how to trigger emotions, and Danny could feel them jostling him that way. Tiny pinpricks of envy, lust, greed, disgust, pride, resentment, ambition, even affection and humor. And the desire to hurt people. That was underlying almost all of them. Not rage, really. Just a desire to cause damage.

But it was all so very faint and weak. And Danny’s own will overpowered them. They gave into him. Accepted his rule. Made him their king, became part of his domain.

And when the last of them was gone from Wheeler, he turned back around. “I was such a jerk, guys,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Xena. “You didn’t mean what you said.”

“Oh, I meant it,” said Wheeler, “because I really am a jerk. But … I knew better than to say it. Danny’s my friend, man. I wouldn’t say stuff like that to a friend, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I do,” said Pat. “And I know why you’re not thinking it now. Because Danny just took away the tiny things that were prompting you to say those things. To feel them.”

“Oh, get real,” said Hal. “Next thing you’ll tell me is we really do have a tiny angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, like in cartoons.”

“We do,” said Pat, “except … no angel.”