I didn"t have a flashlight because I didn"t need one.
Reeling out the charm on its black cord, I let it hang outside my clothing. It was white-hot now, though it didn"t burn. The gems glittered in brilliant colors and shone beams that lanced the night. Showing me the way.
And my path was clear. Monstrous gleaming prints, partly human but clawed, tearing up and trammeling the earth. Think of the way white glows under UV and that"s how they looked.
Just as I also knew that anyone looking at me would"ve seen only a dark silhouette and no light at all. The ability to see-my second sight-was coming from within.
That there was only one set of prints worried me. I was pretty sure the prints belonged to d.i.c.kert-or whatever lived inside. But where was Wylde?
I couldn"t believe my intuition about this was wrong. Although I hadn"t seen her car on the street. Maybe she wasn"t here at all.
So I"m finally cracking up. Well, that"s just great.
But, no, I felt something striding alongside in my mind, a presence. Adam?
In my mind: Hurry, Jason.
The voice was s.e.xless. I couldn"t place it.
I moved swiftly, silently. Almost too quietly; I should be making all kinds of noise. But there was none, as if I skimmed the earth. Snow getting thicker. Ahead, I sensed a s.p.a.ce opening up, and in the next moment I smelled water. Getting close to the lake.
Ahead, I heard a low ba.s.so rumble, the sound of a man"s voice-and then the higher tones of a girl. And I knew: I"d found d.i.c.kert. Heart hammering, I ducked into inkier shadows at the edge of a clearing.
In the center stood d.i.c.kert, 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 grinned down- 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 p.r.i.c.kled.
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, d.i.c.kert-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 d.i.c.kert 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 b.u.t.t of my Glock, and I concentrated on wrapping my hand around the grip, heaving it from my holster. There was a sh.e.l.l 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed since I"d fired my weapon, but I saw that d.i.c.kert, 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 d.i.c.kert"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, beginning to crackle, and now the air they held whirled, the strands of two glowing orbs of energy coalescing, one in each palm, pulling together like the arms of a Milky Way galaxy spinning backward.
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.
d.i.c.kert-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 d.i.c.kert, driving hard, running full tilt, hair billowing.
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 fireb.a.l.l.s: huge, all orange-yellow flame.
Sarah saw them coming. Still running, she lifted both arms in a great fluttering motion as if snapping a sheet. An instant later, the fireb.a.l.l.s connected, squashing flat against some invisible mantle, raining flames on either side of an invisible dome.
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 G.o.ddess. They whip-snapped the distance between her and d.i.c.kert, powerful hands clamping around the dragons" necks even as the dragons twined round her arms. When they crashed together, the air split with a cannonade of thunder.
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.
d.i.c.kert 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 d.i.c.kert-just a man, now-went down.
Sarah reeled, then stumbled backward as the girl tore herself free, spreading upon the air, now white, now black as a mantle of the deepest starless night-and flung herself over d.i.c.kert"s body.
And yet I could see everything, and I knew that what I saw now was t.i.t for tat. Death dealt out in equal measure.
d.i.c.kert"s back arched, yet no sound issued from his wide open mouth. He was slowly suffocating, and I knew just what that felt like. His legs flexed and pedaled to nowhere. His hands were at his throat, his fingers clawing his own flesh to b.l.o.o.d.y ribbons. His face was going plummy purple, eyes bulging now not in rage or triumph but terror.
Still holding the girl, I knelt beside Sarah. Touched her shoulder. She pulled her head around, and with my strange new sight, I saw that her eyes were still green, but for the moment, there was no one else there.
I looked at d.i.c.kert. His legs were shivering, his hands fluttering in death tremors.
"It"s over," Sarah said. "Until next time."
VII.
When Rollins and Arlington "s finest showed up at d.i.c.kert"s rentals, they found a clutch of seven girls in each. The youngest was ten, the eldest seventeen. Each had either been sold by their families or simply kidnapped. Of the twenty-one girls, thirteen were from South Vietnam, seven from Thailand, seven from Cambodia; all were smuggled in by way of the Canadian border into Minnesota. The houses were overseen by "mothers" hired to run the brothels.
They never found Call-Me-Bob. But the girl"s name was Tevy.
Cambodian for "Angel."
In time, the DA saw the wisdom of not stringing up Lily Hopkins as an example. A smart DA, he got her remanded to a psychiatric facility and from there, probation and home.
I"m told Lily wasn"t in an inst.i.tution very long. Her father came to be with her. They probably have a long row to hoe before they"re a family again.
But.
We live in hope.
Never did figure out who that poor Vietnamese girl had been. Sarah didn"t get a name, sorry, but she thought the girl might have been a collective Presence. Many villages in Vietnam and Cambodia had spirits attached to them. So perhaps the girl was the village, and the monk was dead. So.
What was past was past.
We couldn"t have taken it further, anyway. When I went back to look at the DVD, the disk was empty. Poof. Like magic.
As if I"d been allowed to see only what was required to act.
All accounts balanced.
And Sarah Wylde: "A seer?" I asked. This was five days later. We were drinking good coffee-excellent coffee-at a little Ethiopian bakery-cafe off U in the Shaw District. "I"m no prophet."
"Not a seer. A See-er. You"ve got the gift of Sight, not Future Sight, not clairvoyance, but the ability to see manifestations no one else can-and probably more abilities you don"t know. It"s what makes you a good detective. Your hunches? Those sudden aha moments when everything clicks into place?" She gave a lopsided smile, but her lip was almost normal. "That"s part of it. You"ve got something special."
Then she touched her fingertips first to my forehead and then my chest, over my heart.
The place where, a year ago, another woman-different and yet somehow the same-placed her hand and told me why she"d waited around until I"d figured things out. Her mission, you might say.
"There and there," Sarah said. "You"ve been... marked. You"re different."
"But I"m just a cop."
Who"s been touched by a woman who might have been an angel.
"If you were just or only a cop, you couldn"t have seen my avatars. d.i.c.kert would have been just a man. You"d never have found him. I"d never have found him either. Oh, I was... drawn to a certain point in time just as you were, and d.i.c.kert and MacAndrews and Lily Hopkins. But I don"t necessarily know a Malevolent when I see it. That"s why I mantled myself, so I could remain invisible until you"d found him or... you needed me."
I touched the place where the amulet nestled against my skin. "Do you think the rabbi... that Dietterich...?"
"He sounds pretty intuitive. He must"ve sensed something, then given you the amulet, not really knowing how it was going to help."
"And how did it? I still don"t get that."
"Let me see it again." She took the charm I proffered. Stared at it. Then she made a little aha sound and started digging through her purse. Fished out a compact. "Not gibberish. I just wasn"t looking right."
"A compact? I didn"t know you were vain."
"Don"t be mean. Look." Opening the compact, she held the amulet so I could see its reflection in the compact"s mirror. "It"s a mirror script, like da Vinci"s handwriting. That"s ancient paleo-Hebrew from before the First Temple Era. Say, five thousand years ago. That one in the center with hooks like a bull"s skull?"
"Yeah. I thought of Georgia O"Keeffe."
"Close. It represents an ox head, but it"s also an "aleph," the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In their modern equivalents, the letters spell Elohim no matter if you read them right-left, diagonally, or up-down." She paused expectantly, and when I didn"t jump in, she said, "G.o.d, Jason. It"s G.o.d, or whatever power you want to call on. And the gems, these are all from the high priest"s breastplate, each letter a.s.sociated with a specific jewel. The amethyst in the center: Purple is the color of spirituality. Amethyst is the stone of clarity and transformation. Coupled with aleph, it is the power of one, the power of that which is unique and like none other. It"s you, Jason."
I chewed on that a minute. "What about those things I conjured up in my hands? What were those?" But what she"d said was already triggering a.s.sociations I"d look up later.
"Dunno. Be interesting if you can conjure them again."
"How do you know so much?"
"I read a lot. And when you"re in a family as odd as mine..."
"Uh-huh. Tell me something: Your dad being a demon hunter. Is that all hype? Or are we talking like father, like daughter?"
Her emerald eyes sparkled. "I have a very interesting family. Want to meet him?"
"What are you offering?"
"This." Then she cupped a hand to my cheek, and I felt something almost unbearably sweet, and yet also like pain, loosen in my chest. As if by losing one thing I had gained something much greater, even if I could put no name to it. Not yet anyway.
"A door, Jason," she said. "All you need is the courage to open it and step through."