He stared deeply into the energy and felt himself giving in. Here was the power he’d imagined. The power to teach Billy Bodanski and everyone like him a lesson. The power to save his parents—and to make them respect him.

All he had to do was accept it, to drop his defenses and absorb it. He was looking into the face of evil—and he was liking it!

Joseph was focused on the uranium and apparently oblivious to Henry’s distraction. It was only when he shouted “Three!” that he looked up to see Henry losing control. “Brianna!” he shouted. “Bite him … hard!”

She didn’t hesitate. She raced up his chest to the closest exposed skin and sank her teeth into his neck.

“Ahhh!” He screamed and yanked her away with his free hand. “What’s wrong with you?” he yelled.

“He said ‘Three!’ ” she snarled angrily.

One glance at the two old men on the ground snapped him back to his senses. He could never give in to evil. Everything that was wrong in the world had the corruption of power as its source. He was determined to use his power to protect and defend. Fury arose in his chest and pushed outward like an electrical charge in a thunderstorm. “Nooo!” he yelled in pure rage. But instead of throwing the gold into the uranium, he closed his hand around the gold and squeezed it, tighter and tighter. His knuckles turned white from the strain, and the glow from the energy radiated through his skin, revealing his bones like an X-ray.

With an audible CRACK! the energy leapt from the nugget in a blinding streak of lightning. At the same time, Coralis yelled in pain as the quartz ring exploded, releasing the moon’s evil beam and tossing the Wand Master aside like a rag doll. The energies from nugget and ring coalesced into a single ball of malevolent gaseous energy. It swirled in the dark tunnel, expanding, threatening to infect them all.

Acting on pure impulse and instinct, Henry thrust his wand into the center of the energy. The gas reacted. It changed from hot white to pitch black to raging red as Henry focused his willpower—and finally drew the ball of gas into his wand.

“Now … three!” he shouted, pointing the wand at the uranium and shooting the energy from his wand like a ray gun.

Joseph slammed his own wand into the ground at the exact moment the energy streamed from Henry’s wand into the uranium rubble. Activated by Joseph’s wand, the uranium erupted with a field of wavering energy of its own, encircling all of the bad energy and clamping down on it like an iron fist.

Henry fell to the ground in exhaustion as the uranium finished the job, squeezing the bad energy out of existence and leaving the tunnel in deafening silence.