Dickert’s rentals were in Arlington, but his house was in Springfield, an older section of identical 1950s ranch houses near I-495. It was dark by the time we made it. Snow silting down. A meager puddle of silver light from a street lamp illuminated the front drive, but I knew it was Dickert’s place as soon as I laid eyes on a Harley in the driveway.
There were no lights. The house felt empty. I didn’t see a car-I had no idea what Wylde drove-but I did notice that the house backed on dense woods. Lake Accotink Park. “They’re not in there. But I think.” I pointed at the woods.
“How do you know that?”
“Just do.” I popped the car door.
“Damn it, Jason, wait up!” Rollins pushed out of the car as I started around the back of the house. He grabbed my arm. “You have no idea where you’re going. Let me call for some backup. Man, we’re not even on our own turf. We’re going to end up getting our asses fried.”
“You’re right. So you should stay here.” I pulled free before he could protest and started for the woods. “Call for backup, Justin. Cover your ass. Better yet, go to those rental houses and see what you turn up.”
“I don’t have probable cause.”
“Find a busted window.”
He stood there a second, then hissed after me: “Jason, you don’t even have a fucking flashlight!”
“I know,” I said, and then I plunged into the woods.
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 Dickert-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 sexless. 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 space opening up, and in the next moment I smelled water. Getting close to the lake.
Ahead, I heard a low basso rumble, the sound of a man’s voice-and then the higher tones of a girl. And I knew: I’d found Dickert. Heart hammering, I ducked into inkier shadows at the edge of a clearing.
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 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 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.”