Crime Spells

In the center stood Dickert, naked in the glare of my second sight. He seemed, if anything, larger than I remembered, and his skin was shifting as his body rippled, changing colors before my eyes, going from pallid white to a deep cobalt that was almost black. His eyes reddened to fiery pits; slashing white fangs sprouted from fleshy, crimson lips; the skulls on his body gri

At a slip of a girl cringing on the ground in a pool of blood-red gown. Not the girl I’d glimpsed in Wylde; this was the one who’d inhabited Lily’s mind.

But where was Wylde?

The air was getting thick, gathering and bunching on itself, and now I heard the whisk of many voices swirling on eddies and currents that were not breezes but liquid and sullen, with the feel of fingers dragged through tar.

The realization flashed into my mind with all the immediacy of insight.

The clearing was a perfect circle. The perimeter thrilled in the air with a slight tang of ozone, and the hackles of my neck prickled.

An absurd thought, entirely my own: Like a force field.

Stupid. But I reached a hand, felt the jump and shock of electricity as the field reacted, puckering into knives of energy that burned seams into my palm. With a hiss of pain, I pulled back.

At the sound, Dickert-or whatever he was

Devaputra-mara

pivoted. He didn’t even seem surprised. His eyes danced flames, and when he laughed, the sound burst inside my head like napalm. Pain hazed my vision, and I staggered, went down on one knee, then grunted when another white salvo exploded in my brain. Maybe Dickert said something, but I couldn’t hear it over the roaring in my head. Gasping, I pressed my palms against my skull to keep it from blowing apart.

The little girl shrieked, something pointed and piercing that was a stake through my heart.

Had to do something. My slack fingers slapped against the butt of my Glock, and I concentrated on wrapping my hand around the grip, heaving it from my holster. There was a shell in the chamber. The gun was very heavy; my hands were shaking, and I thought: Can’t hit the girl, just don’t hit the girl…

Now, in my head: Jason, no!

I pulled the trigger.

Rocketing from the Glock’s barrel, the bullet whammed against the invisible force emanating from the circle. The circle sheeted purple; the air sung electric. In the next instant, a fist of energy hurtled with all the force and fury of a blow. Pain erupted in my face, and I was lifted off my feet and dashed broadside against a very solid, very real oak with a jolt that shuddered through my bones.

Wind knocked clean out. Unable to breathe, I clutched at my chest, writhing in the dirt, struggling to pull in a precious mouthful of air-and I thought of that poor girl from so long ago.

A mistake. Suddenly, it was as if a giant hand had descended from the sky, clamped around my throat, my mouth, my nose. I couldn’t breathe. Mouth dropping open in a silent scream, gawping, trying to make my lungs work, drink in air. My chest burned; something was squeezing, cinching down around my ribs. My world shrank, my vision nibbled away at the margins, and if that amulet still burned, I no longer felt it.

Darkness before my bulging eyes. I was on my back, staring into a canopy of a blackness darker than night. Couldn’t feel the snow. Pulse thudding in my temples, my mind slowing down, the thoughts like single words sketched in black marker.

Need.

Air.

From the space above my body, the darkness… shifted.

The night peeled away like a wrapping tugged to one side, a curtain lifted, a door opened-

And then Sarah Wylde was there.

She said something and moved her hands over my body. I don’t know what she said, couldn’t tell above the roar in my ears, but then the ache in my chest eased. My throat opened, and I pulled in a shrieking, burning breath of cold air-and then another.

A hand taking mine. Sarah’s grip steady and sure, and now it was her voice in my head: Get up. We have to go together. You have the Sight, now use it!

Somehow I was on my feet, and it was as if things began to tumble into place like cogs meshing with new energy. Perhaps no more than a minute had passed since I’d fired my weapon, but I saw that Dickert, blue and terrible, was bestride the girl, and Sarah’s face was a shimmering oval of pure white light in my new eyes.

What Rollins had said about yantra tattoos: Some make the wearer invisible.

She’d been the presence at my side. Needing me?

Yes. I was the Sight. I could lead. I was the light she needed to see.

“Open the door, Jason.” Speaking now, her voice humming with urgency. “We have to cross into the circle, but we can’t do it unless you open the door.”

“I don’t know how,” I said.

I shouldn’t have been able to see the green fire in her eyes, but I did, just as I knew Dickert’s were red coals. “Open your hands, Jason. Open your hands.”

What? An image shot into my brain-the rabbi, in the kitchen, his fist bunched against his chest: Open your heart.

My palms itched. They began to heat. I stared, and they were glowing, begi

Without knowing why I did it, yet understanding that this was the only way, I thrust my hands toward the field. The moment of contact was brutal and solid, like twin jackhammers punching through concrete that rattled to my shoulders and down my spine. A tremendous BOOM, and then the field shattered, turning into opaque shards that sprayed indigo rooster tails of eerie light.

And then we were through, Sarah’s hand clamped firmly around my wrist, moving with the speed of avenging angels.

Dickert-whatever he was-roared. Wheeling about, he started for us. His body bent, shifted, transmogrified, and now a fan of sinewy dragons sprouted from his torso. They bellowed.

“Get the girl!” Sarah shouted. She let go. “Then get out of here!”

“Not without you!”

“No time!” And then she was sprinting for Dickert, driving hard, ru

Rearing up, the dragons spouted fire.

“Sarah!” I shouted. Somehow I had reached the girl; she was quaking under my hands, shivering as if with a lethal fever. “It’s okay,” I said, thinking, liar, liar!

With a bugling ululation, the dragons let loose fireballs: huge, all orange-yellow flame.

Sarah saw them coming. Still ru

Her tattoos-how could I see them? Her tattoos were moving. A spray of arms, muscular and thick with scythe-like talons, unspooled from her body, like those from a many-armed goddess. They whip-snapped the distance between her and Dickert, powerful hands clamping around the dragons’ necks even as the dragons twined round her arms. When they crashed together, the air split with a ca

And then the most remarkable thing: Sarah’s form blurred, got fuzzy-and then the girl, the one I’d seen die in silent agony over forty years ago, stepped away from Sarah’s body. The girl was all colors and no colors; her eyes were white light, and when she opened her mouth, brilliant lambent pillars shot forth as if all the heavens had gathered in that one place, in that one time.

Dickert bellowed as the light splashed and broke over him, and he backpedaled, off balance. The dragons’ heads smoked, then sprouted frills of fire. The air thrummed with a high-pitched squealing that shook the earth beneath my feet. The dragons dissolved, and then Dickert-just a man, now-went down.