CHAPTER Six

Khasim did not sense that anything was wrong, but from the moment he walked into the club, he felt a vague unease he couldn't quite explain. He glanced around and his gaze fell on the three special effects technicians, Bert Smith, Mort Levine, and Joe Gallico. They were standing together at the bar and staring at him. He could guess why. They all felt threatened by him. They were concerned about their jobs and their dislike of him was obvious. However, he couldn't afford to be bothered by their petty jealousies and insecurities. He had something much more important to be concerned about.

And her name was Jessica Blaine.

He wasn't sure when the idea had first taken form, but he knew the exact moment when it had become an overwhelming obsession. It was the moment when they had filmed the climatic special effects scene in Blood of the Necromancer. In the film, the character that Jessica was playing had been captured by the necromancer and was about to be sacrificed to "the Evil One" when the hero arrived in the nick of time. As the conjured demon leapt at her where she lay helpless on the altar, the hero released the potent charm given to him by the necromancer's jealous mistress and the demon was banished back into the netherworld. Khasim's job in that scene had been to stand in for the actor who played the necromancer and conjure up the demon illusion, then make it disappear as if defeated by the hero's charm. The other scenes had all been filmed already, with the actors playing the necromancer and the hero performing in the scenes occurring immediately before and after the special effects sequence. All that had remained was for Khasim to conjure up the special effect and for Jessica to film her reaction shots. Something had happened to Khasim during the filming of that sequence.

He wondered what the others would have thought if they knew the demon had been real. On a subliminal level, Jessica had sensed it, which was why her terror had been as real as the demonic entity itself, but Khasim had never doubted that he could control it. Since he had started serving his Dark Mistress, his powers had increased a hundredfold. Without her, he was at best an adequate wizard who had barely squeaked through his certification exams. However, from the moment that she first appeared to him in her darkly glowing, featureless state, he had felt his powers increasing exponentially. He had stood for certification as a sorcerer and passed easily. And he was getting stronger still. All it took was the occasional "gift" of a life to the Dark Mistress. Lately, she required more and more frequent "gifts," but Khasim always obliged her. He always told himself that they were, after all, the sort of lives no one would miss. Street people. Women who held themselves so cheaply that they sold their bodies to any man who happened by.

Khasim did not love women. He did not know what love was. Perhaps he understood love as a concept, intellectually, but he had certainly never felt it. And strangely enough, Khasim did not hate women, either. Both love and hate were emotional extremes that were completely foreign to him. What Khasim lived for was manipulating people, especially women. Using them for his own self-gratification. It was far less a matter of lust than of control. What motivated him was the obsessive desire to exercise power over others. A psychiatrist would have diagnosed him as a sociopath, utterly without a conscience, totally self-centered, and capable of feeling no pain other than his own. To Khasim, the women that he used were little more than pawns in a bizarre and complicated chess game. In a very real sense, he defined their existence only in terms of the moves that he could put them through. Their feelings, their desires, their rights, even their very humanity were not an issue to him. Some part of him was dead inside ... or perhaps more accurately, it had never even lived. The ability to control the lives of others gave him a feeling of self-worth, a sense of satisfaction and identity that he could achieve no other way.

The Dark Mistress understood this and she had made it easier for him, feeding a hunger that she knew to be insatiable. And in supporting his psychosis, she was doing to him exactly what he did to others. Khasim understood that all too well, yet he had no choice but to accept their strange and frightening symbiosis. And it was something that was easy to accept, since it fed his appetites so well. Only those appetites kept on increasing. The cravings were becoming more and more intense.

When they had filmed that scene and he had stood up on that promontory, looking down at Jessica chained to the altar, a thrill of anticipation had gone through him. He had actually started to tremble. And when he had conjured up the demon, Jessica's terrified reaction had positively galvanized him. The sight of the demonic entity had touched off an instinctive, primal fear in her and watching it had excited Khasim unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. He had done that to her! He was the demon who had terrified her so! Watching her scream and thrash in terror on the altar, it was all Khasim could do to make the demon disappear. Part of him had wanted to see her torn apart. Ever since that moment, he had not been able to stop thinking about her. Jessica Blaine was different. Very different. She was not some naive runaway or potion addict who struggled for a living on the Strip, someone who would become just another statistic if she disappeared. She was an internationally famous actress, a sex symbol desired by men all over the world, a woman whose standing in the business gave her power and position. And in one magic, blissful moment, he had reduced her to a mewling, frightened little animal. Ever since that moment, the way she looked at him was different. It was there, planted deep down in her psyche, the certain knowledge that he was the one who did that to her and the recognition that he could do it to her again, anytime he chose. The thought intoxicated him and he was sure that it excited her.

And now a new craving had started gnawing at him. He had lost track of all the lives he had presented as "gifts" to the Dark Mistress, but in the past, she had always taken them herself. When he had asked her to claim the life of Victor Cameron, she had demanded one of his captive women as a gift and insisted that he take the life himself. The idea had frightened him at first. And then, as his fingers had closed around the jeweled hilt of the knife that she had given him, that same thrill of anticipation had run through him, much stronger than before. As he held the knife, he realized that here was the ultimate manipulation, the final control. Power over life and death, resting in his hand. He had slit the woman's throat and watched in fascination as the bright red blood welled up in the deep cut and then washed down her throat like water overflowing in a sink. His mouth had gone dry and his breath had caught. He had started to tremble as he shook with the paroxysm of—

The voice of Bert Smith snapped him out of his reverie. "You gonna be workin' on this picture, too, Khasim?" It took him a moment to focus on the man. "Yes," he replied, after taking a deep breath. "Mr. Landau called the mission earlier and left word that my services would be required."

"Is that so?" said Joe Gallico sourly. "I wonder if there'll be any work left over for us."

"I understand there are going to be quite a few effects sequences in this film," Khasim said, not particularly wanting to pursue the conversation, but the special effects men had hemmed him in.

"Yeah, and you can do all of 'em all by yourself, isn't that right?" said Mort Levine. He was drunk.

"If necessary, yes, I could, but you know as well as I do that it would be far more expensive that way."

"Unless maybe you decided to start cutting your prices so you could pick up all the work," said Mort. "Then where would that leave us?"

"I have no intention of cutting my prices," Khasim said, trying to remain outwardly composed. 'Brother Khasim,'

after all, had a certain reputation to maintain. "Why should I do that? I need the funds to support my work at the mission."

"Yeah, only if you dropped your prices for the smaller, less complex effects, you could still charge the full going rate for the big ones you do now and still pick up more funds for your damn mission from the stuff we'd lose out on."

"It almost sounds as if you're trying to talk me into it, Mr. Levine," Khasim said. Bert gave his colleague a sharp look, then turned back to Khasim. "Nobody's trying to talk anybody into anything," he said. "We're only trying to find out your intentions because our jobs could be at stake."

"That is hardly something I can control, Mr. Smith," Khasim said. "Frankly, I have no intention of pricing you out of your jobs, but a lower grade adept, a wizard, or even a warlock for that matter, could easily undercut your prices and there would be nothing you could do about it. My mission is full of people who mistakenly believed that the world owed them a living. I do what I can to help them, but most of the damage was caused by their own attitudes, you see. In life, there are no guarantees, no promises. Conditions in life are ever changing and a man must know how to adapt to them if he is going to exercise any control over his destiny. If you are concerned about adepts making inroads into your business, then unless you can compete with them, I might suggest that you look into training for some other line of work. And now if you gentlemen will excuse me. . . ."

He had spotted Jessica Blaine.

"What is it?" Merlin said, and Billy's face showed his concern.

"He's here!" said Wyrdrune.

"You're certain?"

"There can be no doubt of it," said Modred, anxiously scanning the faces all around them.

"Which one is he?"

"I don't know," said Modred. He glanced at Wyrdrune. "Can you tell?"

"No. But his presence is undeniable." He slipped his headband back briefly to show Modred that his runestone was glowing brightly.

"Kira?"

She shook her head. Unconsciously, she had balled her right hand into a fist.

"We have to find him," Modred said.

At that moment, Ron Rydell came back to rejoin them, bringing several people along with him.

"I brought some folks who'd like to meet you guys," he said, and started performing the introductions. "Mike, allow me to present Sheila Smythe of Celebrity magazine"—he went on to cue him smoothly—"you know that great piece she did on Jessica last month . . . Sheila, Michael Cornwall of Warlock Productions, and this is his partner, Mel Karpinsky. . . ."

"Very pleased to meet you," Modred said in a courtly tone, taking her hand. "We were discussing your piece earlier. I found it very insightful, wouldn't you agree, Ron?"

Rydell smoothly picked up the ball and started dropping a few specifics from the article, so that Sheila Smythe would think they had both read it, when in fact Modred had not only not read it, but also he had never even seen a copy of Celebrity magazine. He had already found out all he needed to know about Sheila Smythe when he touched her hand. She was not the one. As Wyrdrune was being introduced to Sheila, Modred glanced at him and their eyes met. They were both thinking the same thing. There had to be at least several hundred people in the club. How could they possibly sort through them all? And then he noticed that Kira and Billy had both slipped away into the crowd.

"Warlock Productions?" Thanatos said.

"That's right," said Slater. He had just gotten off the phone with the paper's entertainment editor. "They're having a big to-do tonight over at Spago-Pogo on the Strip. Private party to kick off a new coproduction venture between Warlock Productions and Rydell, a film about your old professor, Merlin Ambrosius."

"Indeed? How very interesting. And what do we know about Warlock Productions?"

"Nothing," Slater said. "They seem to be a brand-new outfit, came out of nowhere, but word is they've got a lot of money. That party tonight is supposed to be a very hot ticket. Invitation only."

"Perhaps we should attend," said Thanatos.

"They probably won't let us in," said Slater.

Rebecca flashed her shield. "They'll let us in," she said. "Let's go."

"Miss Blaine."

"Brother Khasim!"

Jessica Blaine was, as usual, surrounded by a throng of men, none of whom looked very pleased by the addition of yet another rival for her attentions, but they relaxed somewhat when they heard her call him by name and introduce him, for the benefit of those who hadn't heard of him, as the man who ran that wonderful mission down the Strip, doing all that wonderful work with the street people.

"Miss Blaine, I merely wanted to say hello and once again apologize for what happened during the filming of that—"

"Oh, I've forgotten all about it," she said breezily, though her eyes clearly revealed that she hadn't forgotten it at all, that she would never forget it for as long as she lived. "And you really must stop calling me Miss Blaine. I'm Jessie to my friends."

He smiled. "Very well, Jessie. And I am simply Khasim to mine. Being called 'Brother' somehow always makes me feel as if I should be tending a garden in a monastic retreat."

"And you're not a monk, is that what you're telling me?" she said with a mocking smile, but there was challenge in her eyes.

"Well, not exactly," he replied. "Monks are generally cloistered in contemplative isolation, are they not? I don't think they make movies."

"Who knows what they do in there?" she said, grinning. "Anyway, I take it Johnny's got you back to do the effects for Ambrosius!"

"Yes, I haven't actually spoken with him yet, but he called and left a message, asking me to come tonight. He said there would be quite a few effects sequences in this film."

"That's what I hear," she said. "After all, it is about the greatest mage who ever lived. I don't think anyone's actually seen the script yet. Ron's being very secretive about it."

"Which part are you playing?"

" Queen Guinevere."

"Of course. I should have guessed," he said. "A woman of surpassing beauty and overwhelming passion. I would say it's perfect casting. Who is the lucky man who's playing Lancelot?"

"I don't know yet. The part hasn't been cast." She smiled. "Why don't you ask Ron if you could read for it?"

" Me? You're joking, surely."

"Oh, I don't know, why not?" she said. Jessica turned away and, taking his arm, started to drift away from the others, much to everyone's disappointment. "You're about the right age for the part and you're certainly attractive enough to pull it off. Unless you're worried about the love scene."

"The love scene?"

"Mmm-hmm. I understand there's going to be a very torrid love scene between Guinevere and Lancelot." She glanced up at him with a sly smile. "You know, I've always wondered what it would be like to make love with a sorcerer." She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. "Think of the possibilities.."

"Jessica! There you are!" Johnny Landau came plowing through the crowd like an icebreaker. "Hey, Khasim, glad you could make it! You're going to handle the effects for us, of course? We're going to need some really spectacular sequences on this one."

"Yes, well—"

"Good, good, it's all settled then. Have you met Burton Clive yet?"

"No, I—"

"He's right over there by the bar. Why don't you go up and introduce yourself? You'll be doing a lot of standing in for him. Jessica, there's somebody I want you to meet. ..."

As he pulled her away, she turned and gave Khasim a smoldering look over her shoulder. Khasim thought that before too long, something decidedly unpleasant might happen to Johnny Landau.

Kira and Billy worked their way through the crowd, scanning all the faces. Kira had taken off her glove and she held her right hand close to her side, cupping it to cover the glow of the sapphire runestone. It would tell her when they were close. And they were slowly closing in. She could feel it.

"Hey, whoa, darlin'! Don't run by so fast! Stop and say hello!"

A young man grabbed her by the elbow as she went past and spun her around. He was well built and tall and blond and slickly groomed, wearing a silk, laced dueling shirt that was open to his waist. There were several amulets around his neck. His teeth were perfect and he was darkly tanned.

"My name's Lance," he said. "Lance Stevens, Mega-sound Recordings. So, tell me, you watch TV or do you have a job?"

"Excuse me—"Kira began, but he interrupted her.

"Excuse you? Oh, now come on, we haven't even had a chance to get to know each other! Loosen up a little."

"I said, excuse me," Kira said, twisting away from him and moving on.

"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, sweetheart—" He started after her, but Billy stood in his way.

"Look, piss off, mate, she's with me," said Billy.

Stevens glanced down at Billy with surprise. "What's this? You don't even look old enough to be in here, little man."

"Ey, she ain't interested, right? Get the message? In other words, sod off!"

"What the hell does that mean? You mouthin' off at me, you little shit? Get out of my way before I give you a spanking."

He reached out to shove Billy aside, but as he did so, Billy's hand darted into the pocket of his leather jacket and brought out a butterfly knife. As Lance grabbed him by the coat, Billy snicked the blade out with a quick flick of his wrist and pressed the point into his groin. Lance froze with a surprised expression on his face.

"Don't push it, mate, unless you want to sing soprano. Got me?"

"Why, you little son of a—"

"Ah-ah!" Billy pressed the point home slightly and Lance gasped.

"All right! All right, you little bastard!"

He let him go. Billy backed up, flicked his wrist to close the blade, and put the knife away, but the moment he turned to follow Kira, Stevens lunged at him.

Billy spun around suddenly, only it was no longer Billy. His eyes blazed with blue fire and twin beams of bright blue thaumaturgic energy shot out from them, striking Stevens in the chest. It happened much too quickly for anyone to fully register what had occurred. There was a very brief, incandescent flash and for a fraction of a second, Stevens was wreathed in a bright blue glow, and then he simply stood there, stunned—and stark naked. Somebody cut loose with a high-pitched scream. Stevens shook his head to clear it and then, with a shock, realized that all his clothes had suddenly disappeared. He yelped and hunched over, covering his privates, but not before everyone around him had seen his shortcomings revealed. He bolted through the laughing crowd, scuttling bent over toward the exit.

Khasim heard the commotion and turned to see what had happened. His gaze fell on Kira, who was coming toward him through the crowd, scanning all the faces around her intently. She hadn't seen him yet. Khasim's gaze was drawn down to her right hand. There seemed to be some sort of blue glow coming from inside it. He stiffened and his eyes glazed over. He pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head, turned, and started heading quickly and purposefully for the door.

Kira felt the stone start throbbing. She looked quickly to her right and then her left and spotted a hooded figure moving away from her, through the crowd. Suddenly, the runestone in her palm was burning.

"It's him," she said. " Billy, it's him!"

She started pushing her way through the crowd.

On any given night, one was apt to see just about anything on Sunset Strip, but neither Thanatos nor Ben Slater nor Rebecca Farrell were quite prepared for the first thing they saw when they pulled up in front of the entrance to the club.

It was the sight of a naked man struggling with a woman dressed in an expensive designer cloak. The cloak seemed to be the object of their altercation. The naked man was desperately trying to get it away from her and had succeeded in yanking it partway off her shoulder, but the woman had paid a small fortune for the cloak and she was hanging on like grim death.

Her companion, another young woman, had joined the fray and as they pulled up, she was in the process of belaboring the naked man about the head and shoulders with her purse. He was attempting to fend her off with one hand while he continued trying to wrest the cloak away from her friend with the other, but he was rapidly losing the contest. In fact, as Slater, Thanatos, and Farrell got out of the police car, the outcome was suddenly decided by a punishing haymaker to the naked man's essentials. He made a sound like a squeaky disc brake and slowly sank down to the sidewalk like a balloon deflating. Lance Stevens was not having a good night.

"All right, nobody move!" Rebecca said. "Police!"

"Don't worry," said the woman with the cloak, "he's not going anywhere." A crowd was gathering around them. With all the focus of attention upon the writhing naked man and the two angry women standing over him, no one noticed the hooded figure leave the club and duck quickly into the alleyway beside it. Nor did anyone notice when, a moment later, Kira came running out and stopped on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, looking both ways up and down the street. She hesitated, started toward the knot of people on the sidewalk, then abruptly changed her mind and ran to the alley. For a moment, she stood at the mouth of the alleyway, staring into it intently, then she went in.

Billy came shoving through the crowd, ignoring the outraged protests of the people he pushed aside as he made his way to Wyrdrune's side.

"Come on," he said, grabbing Wyrdrune's arm and pulling him away from a studio executive. "Kira's spotted him!

Where's Modred?"

"I don't know, he was here just a second ago. I'll use the mind link—"

"No time! Come on!"

They hurried for the door.

Kira walked slowly down the dark alleyway, listening for the slightest sound. She'd been just behind him and there was no sign of him when she came out the door. He had to have come this way. Whatever was going on out in front of the club could be just a diversion or it could have nothing to do with him at all. Either way, she couldn't let him get away. And the runestone throbbing in her palm told her that she was on the right track. She stopped and listened.

She couldn't hear anything except for the muffled sounds of music coming through the wall of the club. Her right hand was trembling; the runestone seemed to be vibrating in her palm. He was here, close by, waiting for her. She was sure of it. She glanced over her shoulder nervously. Where the hell was Billy? He'd been right behind her when she left the club, or so she thought. She reached inside her leather jacket and felt the bone handle of the commando knife in its sheath, sewn securely into the inside of her jacket. She started to summon up the mind link—

And at that moment, something hit her.

Wyrdrune and Billy came running out of the club and the first thing they saw was a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk. There were two police vehicles at the curb, a patrol unit, and an unmarked car. For a moment, Wyrdrune had the terrible image of Kira stretched out on the sidewalk, dead, but then he saw a man with a blanket draped over him being handed into the patrol car and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Do you see her?" asked Billy.

"No," said Wyrdrune as they both looked up and down the street for any sign of her.

"Kira!" Billy shouted.

Thanatos heard the name and spun around.

And suddenly they heard her scream. "Billy!"

It came from the alleyway. Wyrdrune and Billy took off at a dead run. Thanatos grabbed Slater by the arm.

"Come on, Ben!"

They pushed their way through the crowd of curious onlookers.

The jarring impact on her back had knocked Kira to the ground, but a lifetime of survival on the streets of New York City had given her incredibly quick reflexes in addition to the strength and acrobatic skills she had developed as a cat burglar. She instinctively dropped down to her knees, using her attacker's downward momentum to fling him off her back. As he leapt at her again, she came up quickly with the knife and slashed at her assailant. There was an unearthly howl of pain and Kira froze.

What she was facing wasn't human. The figure in the hooded cloak had two arms and it stood on two legs and it was dressed in human clothing, but there the similarity ended. She couldn't see too clearly in the darkness of the alley, but she could see enough to make out that the creature's face was covered with fur and its mouth was less a mouth than a muzzle, with saliva dripping from its fangs. The eyes were yellow, lambent like a wolf's, and it growled as it crouched before her, clutching itself where she had wounded it.

"Jesus Christ..." she said, and then she heard Wyrdrune call her name.

" Warlock!" she shouted, and as she called to him, the creature came at her again. It caught her knife hand and slammed her up against the wall. She could feel the warmth of its fetid breath as it snarled, its muzzle inches away from her face, and then the stone in the palm of her right hand flashed brightly, illuminating the alley with its sapphire glow, and a beam of pure thaumaturgic force lanced out from it and struck the creature in the face.

The monster screamed.

" Kira!"

Wyrdrune and Billy came running into the alley. Billy flung out his arm and blue fire crackled around his outstretched fingers as Merlin sent a bolt of thaumaturgic energy flashing toward the creature. It missed and struck a dumpster, causing the metal to soften and run like molten plastic. Wyrdrune tore off his headband and the emerald set into his forehead flashed with green fire, sending a bright green beam of force directly at the creature, but before it could strike home, the creature disappeared. It had thrown up its cloak and simply vanished. Wyrdrune and Billy came running up to Kira.

"Are you all right?" said Merlin, with concern.

She nodded.

"Okay, hold it right there! Police!"

Rebecca Farrell stood at the mouth of the alley with her gun drawn. There were two other officers beside her, as well as Thanatos and Slater.

"Shit," said Wyrdrune. He grabbed Kira and Billy, quickly mumbled a teleportation spell under his breath, and all three of them disappeared.

The police officers opened fire.

" Hold it! Hold it! " Rebecca shouted. " Cease fire! What the hell are you shooting at?

The two officers looked at her sheepishly and put their guns away.

"What the hell was all that about?" asked Slater.

"Get over to the club," Rebecca said to the two officers. "Cover the backdoor and get some backup over here. I don't want anyone to leave until we've had a chance to ask some questions."

Thanatos simply stood there, staring at the spot where they had stood. There was no longer anybody there, but he could distinctly see two auras . . . one bright blue, and one bright green.

CHAPTER Seven

Khasim had never felt such agonizing pain before in his entire life. It burned like fire, no, worse man fire, it felt as if his face had been torn off and then the raw, bloody, throbbing flesh beneath slathered with sulfuric acid. He materialized in his hidden sanctuary underneath the mission and collapsed to his knees, crying out and hammering his head against the floor, his hands covering his ruined face.

"Help me ... help me. . . ."he moaned.

He struggled to his feet, but crashed into a coffee table and fell to the floor again, whimpering and moaning like a wounded animal.

"Help me, Mistress. . . . Help me, please. ..."

His captive, spellbound women came in answer and he grabbed the first one that came near him, pulling her down to the floor. His hood fell back and she saw his face. She screamed.

He raised his hand, a furry paw with long, razor-sharp claws, and brought it down hard, again and again and again, until she screamed no more. And then he lunged at the next one and brought her down as well, tearing at her throat with his teeth.

Behind him, a darkly glowing figure stood like a three-dimensional shadow outlined in a thin border of bright light, a light that seemed to grow brighter as each unfortunate woman died. Finally, having slaughtered them all, the pain-racked beast that was Khasim huddled on the floor, pawing at the rug with bloody claws and whimpering. The shadowy, dark form stretched an arm out toward him and gradually, the pain began to ebb. Khasim spasmed on the floor as he slowly reverted to his human form. His face was horribly disfigured, but as he lay there, twitching and shaking, gasping for breath, his wounds magically healed. Moments later, there was no trace of the disfigurement caused by the thaumaturgic beam or of the knife wound that Kira had inflicted on him. Slowly, Khasim got up to his hands and knees, facing the specter in the corner. "Thank you," he said, his voice a ragged croak. "Thank you, Mistress, thank you. ..."

" You failed me, Khasim," she said, her sepulchral voice echoing throughout the room.

"Forgive me, Mistress. I did not think. . . . That is, I meant to. ..." He shook his head, bewildered. "I don't know what happened. I don't know how. . . . Who was that girl?"

"She is my enemy, Khasim. And you let her live."

"I tried, Mistress, but—"

"But you failed."

Khasim hung his head and nodded miserably. "Yes, Mistress. But there were those others—"

" Have I ever failed you, Khasim? "

"No, Mistress. Never."

" Have I not given you everything you ever asked for? "

"Yes, Mistress," he said in a small voice, afraid to look up at her dark, featureless form.

" And yet still you fail me. "

"I'm sorry, Mistress," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I won't fail you again."

" If you do, Khasim, I will have your life, " she said.

He trembled. "I will find her, Mistress, I swear it. I will find her and make you a present of her life. But who is she?

And that blazing jewel, what was it?"

" There are three of them, Khasim, and you can be thankful that you only encountered two of them tonight. When they are all together, the runestones are invincible. "

"The runestones?"

" A sapphire, an emerald, and a ruby. Three enchanted gems imbued with untold power. Each is bonded to a different individual, melded with their life force. Without the runestones, they are nothing, but when the three stones are in concert, their power is almost limitless. Yet separately, they can be defeated."

"Then I shall do it, Mistress. I will track them down and I will bring you these enchanted stones."

"No! They must be destroyed!"

"Destroyed? But if they have such power, then surely—"

"Do you question me, Khasim? "

"No, Mistress." For a brief instant, he glanced up at her, then quickly looked away.

" When the time comes, I will tell you how the stones must be destroyed," she said. "But for now, we must prepare. I must make you stronger so that you may deal with them and for that, we need more lives, Khasim. Many more lives.

"

"Look, I don't know what's going on," said Ron Rydell, "but is anybody filing charges here? I mean, has there been some kind of crime committed? What's this all about?"

"We would merely like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Rydell, that's all," Rebecca said. "You wouldn't mind just answering a few questions, would you?"

"Look, Captain, I've got nothing against cooperating with the police, you understand, but I don't really think I'm out of line if I demand to know what the hell is going on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for any trouble, but you come in here without any warrants, you interrupt a private party, and you inconvenience a lot of very important people. I sure as hell hope you have a damned good reason for all this! I mean, has somebody been killed, or what?"

"First of all, Mr. Rydell," Rebecca said, "we do not require a warrant to enter public premises—"

"It was a private party—"

"That makes no difference. I'm sorry if your guests are being inconvenienced, we'll try to wrap this up as soon as possible. In fact, if we could proceed, we could finish that much sooner and—"

"Wait a minute," Rydell said, looking at Slater. "I know you. Ben Slater, right? The columnist?"

"Have we met?" said Ben.

"No, I recognized you from your picture. I read your column all the time."

"Thank you."

"You're a hell of a writer."

"Thanks again."

"Could we please get on with this?" Rebecca said, slightly exasperated.

"You usually let newspaper people tag along on your investigations, Captain Farrell?" countered Rydell.

"Mr. Slater is not officially part of this investigation," said Rebecca patiently. "However, he is assisting in an unofficial capacity and . . . why the hell am I explaining this to you?"

"This is where you're supposed to say, I'll ask the questions, Rydell,' " Rydell said with a grin. Slater tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile.

"Perhaps I should ask the questions," Thanatos said.

"And who are you?" Rydell said.

Thanatos reached into his coat pocket and took out his I.D. Rydell glanced at it briefly and raised his eyebrows.

"I.T.C., huh? Okay, so I'm impressed." He glanced from Rebecca, to Ben and back to Thanatos. "Precinct captain, big-time investigative columnist, and now a field agent for the I.T.C. Something sure as hell is up. But you guys aren't going to tell me what it is, right?"

"Right," said Thanatos.

Rydell nodded. "Okay. Fine. Then you can take your questions and shove 'em, because I haven't done anything wrong and I'm not saying anything until I know what the hell this is all about. What do you think about that?"

"I think that would be rather ill advised, Mr. Rydell," said Thanatos calmly. "Because, you see, if you refused to cooperate, I could ask Captain Farrell to place you under arrest."

"On what charge?"

"Oh, I'm quite certain she could think of something," Thanatos said nonchalantly. "Of course, it probably wouldn't stick, but by the time your attorney managed to get you released, there would have been plenty of time for me to place you under a spell of compulsion, forcing you to answer any questions I might choose to put to you. Such as, have you anything at all to hide, Mr. Rydell?"

Rydell licked his lips nervously. "You couldn't do that."

"Certainly I could."

"That's illegal."

"Well, in point of fact, the law is somewhat nebulous on that point, since in a case such as this, it becomes a rather complicated question of jurisdiction. However, I could easily avoid potential difficulties by questioning you and then making you forget you'd ever been questioned. In any case, I don't see where it would make a great deal of difference to you either way . . . unless, of course, you had something to hide. But then again, most people do, don't they?" Rydell turned pale. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "All right, you've made your point. What do you want to know?"

"What was the purpose of this occasion tonight?" asked Thanatos.

"To publicize my next film, Ambrosius!"

"Which you are coproducing with another company, is that correct?" said Thanatos. Rydell stared at him. "I see you've already asked some questions," he said. "Yeah, that's right. My backers for this film are Warlock Productions."

"And are they here tonight, as well?"

"Well, yeah, it's their party," Rydell said. He looked around. There were a lot of people at the bar, the others were all milling around, watching and talking among themselves, trying to figure out why the police had crashed the party.

"I don't see them anywhere," Rydell said, "but they're probably around here someplace."

"Probably?"

"Well, yeah, I guess. I mean, I didn't see 'em leave."

"What are their names?"

"What?"

"The principals of Warlock Productions," Thanatos said. "Your new partners. What are their names?"

"Mike Cornwall and Mel Karpinsky."

"I see. There are only those two?"

"Well, there's their . . . uh, executive assistants. . . ."

"And what are their names?"

Rydell hesitated, unsure of where this was leading. Knowing exactly who and what his partner was made him even more uneasy. He wondered how much the I.T.C. man knew.

"Billy Slade and Kira ..." He shrugged and shook his head. "I don't know her last name. She never uses it."

"Would she happen to be a striking brunette, about five foot six, slim, with a penchant for wearing black leather jackets and a glove on one hand?"

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"And would Billy Slade be a teenaged boy with an outlandish hairstyle and a cockney accent?"

"Yeah, but—"

"And Mel Karpinsky, he'd be in his mid-twenties, with long, curly blond hair, usually wearing either a hat or a headband?"

"That's right. Listen, how did you—"

"And Michael Cornwall would be blond, bearded, and muscular, with gold-rimmed eyeglasses, an elegant wardrobe, and a British accent?"

Rydell glanced nervously from Thanatos to Rebecca. "What is this? What's going on?" Thanatos looked up at Rebecca. "I think we're finished here, Captain Farrell," he said, standing up from the table. Rebecca seemed surprised. "You don't want to take him in for questioning?"

"No, I don't think that will be necessary. I think Mr. Rydell has told us all he knows. Let's leave him to enjoy his party." He turned back to Rydell. "I'm sorry if we've inconvenienced you and your guests, Mr. Rydell. We're quite finished now, so we'll be leaving. Thank you for your cooperation."

Rydell simply stared at him, not knowing what to say.

Thanatos started to leave, but then he hesitated and turned back. "By the way, I would appreciate it if the next time you see him, you could give your partner, Mr. ... uh ... Cornwall"—he stressed the name ironically—"a message for me. Tell him that an old friend of his mother's said hello."

Once they were outside, he turned to Rebecca and said, "I think Mr. Rydell should be watched closely. I suggest you assign your most experienced detectives to the task, people who are expert at not being spotted. Rydell probably wouldn't spot them in any case, but our Mr. Cornwall, he's a horse of an altogether different color."

"You know a lot more about this case than you've told me, Thanatos," Rebecca said. "I think it's about time you filled me in on all the details. I don't like working in the dark, especially when I know you're telling Slater more than you've told me."

Thanatos paused and seemed to consider for a moment. "You're quite right, Captain Farrell. Please make no mistake, I fully appreciate your position. However, if I've told Ben Slater more than I've told you, it's because he does not have to account to a police administration that may not quite see eye to eye with me when it comes to my methods of handling this case."

"Are you saying you don't trust me?" she said.

"It's not a question of trust," he replied as they headed back toward the car. "You misunderstood me. You may recall that a number of times, I've commented on the jurisdictional problems inherent in this case. Officially, what we have here is a homicide that has occurred within your jurisdiction. Unofficially, we've all acknowledged that necromancy is behind it, which makes it the jurisdiction of the Bureau. However, this case is also directly connected with a series of grisly murders that took place in London last year, as well as a number of other deaths, and that would make it my jurisdiction. Unfortunately, I can't prove that, at least not yet, so officially, I can't take charge of the case. Gorman can at least prove necromancy, but he doesn't want to go public with it, so he won't officially take charge, either. And that, Captain Farrell, leaves you officially in charge, so that you can officially take all the heat while Gorman and I unofficially pursue the case. You see where I'm heading, don't you?"

"You're saying that what I don't know, I can't be held responsible for," she said.

"Precisely. I knew you'd understand."

"I understand just fine, but I still think it stinks. I don't work that way, Thanatos. If you and Gorman want to cover your asses officially, that's your business, but I take full responsibility for what happens in my precinct and I want to know what's going on."

Thanatos studied her thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded. "All right. Only not here. Where can we go to talk?"

"My place isn't too far from here," said Ben.

"Fine, we can go there. But first, we'd better have someone detailed to keep an eye on Rydell. It's liable to be a very long night and you can be certain that before it's over, people are going to die."

Wyrdrune materialized back in their cottage at the The Beverly Hills Hotel with a pop of displaced air.

"Boy, that was close," he said. "We almost got ourselves shot by . . ." His voice trailed off as he suddenly realized he was alone.

"Oh no," he said, shutting his eyes and bringing his hand up to his forehead. "Don't tell me. ... Kira? Billy?" He ran over to the closet and opened it.

"Kira?"

There was no one inside.

"Billy?"

He ran to the door and opened it. There was no sign of them outside, either.

"Oh, hell," he said, thinking of all the places he might have accidentally teleported them to. "Now what've I done?" There was a sudden pop of displaced air and Kira and Billy materialized before him.

Wyrdrune breathed a sigh of relief. "There you are! Where were you?"

"Where were we?" Kira said irately. "Where you teleported us, you bonehead! Up on the roof! If it wasn't for Merlin, we'd still be there!"

Billy shook his head and spoke with Merlin's voice. "I just can't understand it. Why you can't master a simple spell like teleportation. ..."

"He masters it all right when it comes to himself," said Kira sourly. " He arrived where he was supposed to, didn't he? But me he drops into fountains, dumpsters, pops me into closets, up on the roof. . . . One of these days I'm liable to wind up inside a wall and then what do I do?"

"Look, I'm sorry, but I was in a hurry. In case you didn't notice, they were about to start shooting at us!"

"We would have been perfectly safe if you'd left it up to me," said Merlin. "You were always so impetuous, Karpinsky, so impatient! All things considered, it's a miracle that you've survived this long."

"Hey," said Wyrdrune, " I'm not the one who died, remember?"

"Very funny."

"Haven't you two forgotten something?" Kira said. "What about Modred?"

"Modred can take care of himself," said Merlin. "The important thing is, are you all right?" Kira nodded. "Yeah, I'm okay." She held up her right hand, palm open. "Thanks to this."

"Did you get a good look at him?" asked Wyrdrune.

She shook her head. "No, not before he changed. I took a piece out of him, though."

"That probably won't help us, either," Merlin said. "Unless he's been fatally injured, the Dark One can heal him. It would require a strong infusion of life energy, but the Dark Ones and their acolytes have never hesitated when it came to murder."

Wyrdrune watched as Billy clasped his hands behind his back and slowly started pacing back and forth across the room, the way Merlin always used to do in class.

"What puzzles me is the rather serendipitous arrival of the police," he continued. "Even if someone had reported a disturbance almost immediately, there could not have been enough time for the police to respond so quickly."

"Maybe they just happened to be driving by," said Wyrdrune. "There was some sort of a disturbance outside the club."

"Yes," said Merlin, "only along with the uniformed officers, there were also several in plain clothes. Detectives. Why would detectives respond to a public disturbance?"

The phone rang. Since he was right next to it, Merlin picked it up.

" 'Allo?" said Billy. He listened a moment. "Michael? No, 'e's not. I dunno where 'e is." He paused. "Yeah, 'e's 'ere.

'Old on."

He held the phone out to Wyrdrune. "It's Rydell. 'E sounds a bit frantic." Wyrdrune took the phone. "Hello, Ron?"

"Where the hell did you guys disappear to?" Rydell said. "The police were just here!"

"The police?" said Wyrdrune, glancing up at the others. He put down the receiver and turned on the speakerphone so they all could hear. "Why? What happened?"

"Suppose you tell me," Rydell said. "The precinct captain herself was here. And Ben Slater, the columnist, was with 'em, too. He's the top investigative reporter in the city, in case you didn't know. And they knew all about you. The guy asking the questions was an agent of the I.T.C., no less."

"Wait a minute," said Wyrdrune. "The I.T.C. was asking questions about us? What did you tell them?"

"I told them we were working on a film together, what was I supposed to tell them? That's all I know! And, believe me, I don't want to know anymore! The I.T.C. guy threatened to take me down to headquarters and put me under a spell of compulsion to answer questions, questions like do I have anything to hide? You tell our friend 'Michael' about that, okay? I don't know how much he's told you, but you tell him it wouldn't look too good for either of us if I was made to answer questions like that!"

"Take it easy," Wyrdrune said. "The man was bluffing. He couldn't question you like that. It's against the law. It's a violation of your rights."

"Yeah, that's what I told him," said Rydell. "And you know what he came back with? He said it didn't matter, because he could put me under a spell to forget it ever happened. Said it calm as you please, right in front of a precinct captain and a newspaperman, no less! And they didn't even bat an eye!"

"What else did they ask you?" Wyrdrune said.

"Nothing. The guy just asked me who the principals of Warlock Productions were and then he described you to me and asked if the descriptions matched."

"Hold it," Wyrdrune said. " He described us to you? You mean you described us to him, don't you?"

"No, man, I mean he described you to me, right down to a 'T.' And he said something else, too. I don't know what the hell it means. He said, 'Tell Mr. Cornwall'—and he said it like he knew it wasn't his real name—'that an old friend of his mother's said hello."

Wyrdrune looked at Kira and Billy with a worried expression. "What else did he say?"

"Nothing. After that, they left. Look, I don't know what you guys are into and like I said, I don't want to know, okay? But whatever it is, do me a favor, just tell me this—does it have anything to do with me and with the film?"

"No," said Wyrdrune. "It has nothing to do with you or with the film."

"You're sure?"

"Ron—"

"Well, look, whatever it is, please, just keep me and the movie out of it. And when you see him, you tell our mutual friend that we've got to talk. No, wait, maybe that's not such a hot idea. I don't want to see anything interfere with the production. We're building sets, we're scouting locations, we're getting ready to do wardrobe, I've got a thousand things to worry about without having the police around, so maybe you guys just shouldn't come around, huh? I don't want to worry about anything happening to shut me down—Jesus, you don't think they'd do that, do you? They wouldn't shut me down?"

"I don't see why, Ron," Wyrdrune said. "You're not doing anything wrong. You're just making a movie."

"Right. Right. So let's keep it that way, okay?"

"Fine, Ron. Don't worry. Everything will be all right."

"Ask him who the agent was," said Merlin.

"Oh, Ron? By the way, who was the agent that you spoke to?"

"Foreign guy. He used a mage-name. Thanatos. Why?"

"Nothing, just curious."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Rydell said. "Look, you're not going to get me mixed up in anything, are you? You're not going to pull out and leave me high and dry?"

"What are you worried about, Ron?" said Wyrdrune. "You've already got the money, right?"

"Yeah, right, but—"

"But nothing. Just make your film, Ron. Stop worrying so much. Good-bye."

Wyrdrune hung up the phone and shook his head. "For all he knows, we're wanted for mass murder or something and all he's worried about is his movie."

"That's Hollywood," said Kira.

"He's nobody's fool, that's for certain," said Merlin thoughtfully.

"Who, Rydell?" said Wyrdrune.

"No, no, I was talking about Thanatos," said Merlin.

"The I.T.C. agent?" Kira said. "You know him?"

"I taught him," Merlin said. "His truename is Bryant Winslow. I named him Thanatos because I often joked that he would be the death of me. He was one of my most gifted students, but he was far from zealous in his application." He glanced pointedly at Wyrdrune. "Not unlike some others I could mention."

Wyrdrune grimaced.

"What did he mean with that line about being an old friend of Modred's mother?" Kira asked. "He couldn't possibly know about Modred, could he?"

"Morgana was also an agent of the I.T.C," said Merlin. "And her death was the one loose end that we could not tie off. If Thanatos was assigned to investigate it, it's just possible that somehow he's managed to piece it all together."

"But how?" said Kira.

"There's only one explanation I can think of," Merlin said, fishing his pipe out of his pocket and filling it. "He must have spoken with Chief Inspector Blood."

"I don't believe it," Wyrdrune said. "Blood helped us. He understood what we were up against. Hell, he was there, he saw it! He wouldn't set the I.T.C. on us!"

"No, I don't believe he would," said Merlin, puffing his pipe alight. The pungent aroma of melting rubber wafted across the room. "Unless he believed that he was helping us."

. "How does talking to the I.T.C. help us?" Wyrdrune said wryly. "Al'Hassan was an official of the I.T.C, remember?"

"Yes, I remember all too well," said Merlin, his pipe now giving off an odor of fresh-baked, apple-cinnamon pie.

"Still, perhaps the I.T.C. could help us."

"A bunch of sorcerers turned bureaucrats?" said Wyrdrune derisively. "Even if we could get them to believe us, they'd only wind up starting a panic, getting in the way and getting themselves killed. They wouldn't stand a chance against the Dark Ones. You tried to stand against them by yourself and look what happened."

"Please, don't remind me," Merlin said, blowing out a stream of violet-scented smoke. "You think I enjoy being trapped in the body of this prepubescent leather fetishist?"

"Ey, 'ow d'ya think I feel?" Billy said. "You think I like 'avin' an old geezer like you stuck in me 'ead, all the time moanin' and gripin' and makin' me smoke this bloody bog moss?" He took the pipe out of his mouth, made a face, and spat on the rug. "Gor'blimey, what 'orrid stuff!"

"If you don't mind, I happen to enjoy it!" Merlin said, making Billy put the pipe back into his mouth.

"Yeah, but I'm the one what's gotta smoke the bleedin' mess!" He took the pipe out of his mouth again and brought his hand back to fling it across the room.

"Don't you dare!" shouted Merlin, stopping the arm in mid-swing. "That's a four-hundred-year-old, hand-carved Algerian briar!"

Billy struggled, having a tug-of-war with his own arm muscles as he tried to throw the pipe while Merlin restrained him.

"Leggo me arm!"

"Stop that, you little holligan! Stop it, I say!"

"Do you people know what time it is?" the broom said," swaying sleepily into the room. It had a red nightcap stuck on the end of its handle.

"Go back to sleep, Broom," Wyrdrune said wearily.

"Who can sleep with all this tummel? It's almost two o'clock in the morning! It took me hours to get to sleep after listening to those fercocktuh birds all day long and now I have to listen to young Mr. Split Personality kvetching at himself? Who needs this, I ask you? Is it too much trouble to go to bed like normal people?"

"Listen 'ere, you scraggly old loo swabber," said Billy, "you shut yer cakehole! Wherever the 'ell yer bleedin'

cake-hole is!"

"Did he just call me a toilet brush?" the broom said in an outraged tone. "Was that what you called me, a toilet brush? Gevalt! I don't have to take that kind of talk from someone who wears his hair like a Shetland pony and dresses like a stolen car."

"Right," said Billy, snaking his hand out and grabbing the broom around the handle. "I'm gonna tear out all yer bleedin' bristles!"

"No, you're not," said Merlin.

"I am, too!"

"You are not!"

"Let me go, both of you!" the broom cried.

"Billy. . . . Professor. ..." Wyrdrune said.

"You stay out of this!" said Merlin. "I've had about enough disobedience from this young whelp!"

"Whelp, eh?" said Billy. "I'll whelp you right upside the 'ead, I will!"

"That would be a neat trick," Kira said. She stepped up to Billy, grabbed a handful of his crested hair, and held her knife against it.

"Ey!"

"Let the damn stick go and settle down, or else I'll scalp you, you little twerp."

"Awright, awright!" said Billy, letting the broom go. It quickly retreated to the closet. "But I still ain't smokin' this dreck!"

And he tossed the pipe across the room.

" Ahhhh!" cried Merlin, and Billy suddenly started smacking himself in the head.

"Ey! Stop it! Cut it out!"

"You rotten little pismire! You've had this coming to you!"

"Stop it, you crazy old git!"

Wyrdrune rolled his eyes at Kira. "It's going to be a long, long haul," he said, shaking his head with resignation.

"Cheer up," she said. "It could be a lot worse."

"Yeah? How?"

"It might not have been Billy that Merlin decided to possess. He could've chosen one of us, instead." Wyrdrune turned pale. "Don't," he said. "Don't even think it!" The door opened and Modred came in. One look at the expression on his face and they all instantly became silent.

"I'm afraid we have a rather serious problem," he said, looking around at them. "There's more than one of them."

CHAPTER Eight

"What do you mean there's more than one of them?" said Wyrdrune.

"There's more than one necromancer," Modred said. He glanced at Kira. "Are you all right?"

"Never mind me, I'm fine," she said."What do you mean there's more than one necromancer? Are you saying there are two Dark Ones?"

"There are at least two, and perhaps more," said Modred.

"How do you know?" said Wyrdrune.

"It's obvious how he knows," said Merlin. "His runestone sensed their presence."

"More than that," Modred said. "I saw them."

"You saw them?" Wyrdrune said, his eyes wide. "Where? When?"

"In the alleyway, when Kira was attacked. It was a close call," he added. "I had a rather narrow escape myself." He took off his jacket and they saw that his sleeve was red with blood.

"You've been shot!" said Kira.

Modred glanced at her and smiled slightly. "Yes, I know. I'm afraid I caught a bullet when the police officers started shooting. Careless of me. I'd say they overreacted somewhat, wouldn't you?"

"Let me have a look at that," said Merlin.

"No need," said Modred. "The wound is already almost healed."

He took off his shirt and they saw that he was right. Not only had the wound stopped bleeding, but it had already closed and new skin was quickly forming.

Modred examined the wound thoughtfully. "I've always healed more quickly than ordinary humans, but never quite as fast as this."

"The runestone?" Kira said.

Modred nodded. "Unquestionably. It's healing me even as we speak."

It was true. The bullet wound was healing right before their eyes. Merlin looked for an exit wound, but there wasn't one.

"What about the bullet?" he said with some concern. "It's not still in there, is it?"

"No, it was expelled," said Modred, going to the closet to get a fresh shirt. "I've never experienced anything like it. The bullet was literally forced out of my body through the entry wound, as if by some sort of telekinesis." He glanced at Wyrdrune. "As I recall, you also healed very rapidly after our first battle with the Dark Ones. Our symbiosis with the runestones seems to be responsible. They're using their energy to accelerate our normal healins functions. You know I'm beginning to think that short of a mortal wound, we can survive almost anything."

"Perhaps," said Merlin, "but that's no reason for becoming careless. Surviving a physical attack is one thing. A magical attack is something else, again. Which brings us back to the essential point of this discussion. How can you be certain that what you saw were Dark Ones? Tell me what happened."

"At the moment Kira was attacked," he said, tucking in his shirttails, "I suddenly felt. . . ." He hesitated and then shook his head. "No, it wasn't a feeling, exactly. It was more like an extremely powerful intuition. I simply knew somehow that Kira was in trouble."

"I know what you mean," Wyrdrune said. "I felt it too, right after Billy came to get me in the club. The minute we got outside, I knew Kira was in danger."

Modred nodded. "Yes, we already know we can call upon the runestones to forge a psychic link between us. Only it also seems to be an involuntary function, something that happens by itself only when the runestones feel it's absolutely necessary."

"That would make sense," said Merlin. "Such a link, established thaumaturgically, requires considerable lifeforce energy which the runestones would understandably want to conserve. Go on."

"Anyway," Modred continued, "the moment I sensed that Kira was in trouble, I bolted outside through the rear door of the club. I'm not sure how I knew to head for the alleyway, but I simply did. I ran down the back steps and the moment I turned the corner into the alley, I saw that creature teleport to escape from your attack. When the police arrived, I would have made myself scarce just as you did, only in that instant, I also saw something else.

"They were behind the dumpster," he continued, "not twenty feet away from me. It was dark, but they were outlined with thin borders of bright light, an effect rather like a solar eclipse. Two shadowy, indistinct, ghostly figures. I had the momentary impression that they were hovering, floating just above the ground. They turned toward me for an instant and then suddenly they were both gone. They simply disappeared. Before I could react, the police had started shooting and I was hit. I don't think they even saw me at the back of the alley. The police, that is. They must have instinctively started shooting when you teleported. It was probably a shock reaction, their fingers involuntarily tightening on the triggers. I was hit by a stray bullet. It knocked me down, which was rather fortunate, or I might have been more seriously wounded. I figured that you'd probably come back here and so I followed."

"And you're certain about what you saw?" asked Merlin.

Modred nodded. "There can be no doubt. The runestone reacted very strongly. I had a sudden, sharp, searing pain in my chest, as if the stone had suddenly become white-hot. I think the Dark Ones must have sensed it, too, which must be why they left so quickly. I have to admit that puzzles me. I was alone and there were two of them. Why didn't they try to kill me?"

"Perhaps it was because they couldn't," Merlin said. "They were not physically there. What you saw were only their manifestations, projections of their astral selves. Which is not to say they had no power, but they wouldn't be at full strength unless they were actually physically present." He picked up his pipe and started tamping the tobacco back down with his thumb.

"'Gor', you're not gonna fire that bloody thing up again, are you?" Billy protested.

"Quiet, Billy," Merlin said, scowling as he snapped his fingers and lit his pipe with a jet of flame that shot out of his thumb. "I have no time to argue. We must plan carefully. We've obviously lost the element of surprise. But then, in a sense, so have the Dark Ones. True, we don't know where they are, but we now know that there are at least two of them. The question is, are there anymore?"

"I'd say the question is will they stay and fight?" said Modred. "Or will they disappear now that they know we're on to them and turn up somewhere else?"

"It's possible," said Merlin. "When they broke free of the spell that confined them, they scattered far and wide, each thinking only to escape from the power of the runestones. Separately, they could never be as strong as the three of you together. But they have had some time now, time in which to gather acolytes and murder to increase their strength. Time to learn not to repeat the mistakes they made with Al'Hassan. There will be no more wholesale butchery such as they accomplished through him, because any spell strong enough to kill people in such vast numbers would also be strong enough to enable you to trace it to its source. And that would be the last thing that they would want." Merlin paced back and forth across the room, puffing out huge clouds of aromatic smoke. The smell of nuts roasting mingled with the heady odor of fresh-baked raspberry tarts, then changed once again to the unpleasant scent of mothballs.

"No, I think they've learned from their mistakes," he said, continuing his pacing. "They will try to increase their powers gradually, so as not to give away their exact location. We know of at least one acolyte and you can be sure that there are others. They will use those acolytes to kill for them, just as in the ancient days, when they appointed priests to conduct their sacrificial rituals. They have had to establish a sanctuary for themselves and find people they could use to serve their purposes. They will not be anxious to abandon what they have accomplished here and start all over somewhere else. At least, not unless they have no other options left. The fact that there are two of them suggests there may be more and that, in turn, suggests that they have a leader among them. And that's very disturbing news, indeed. Still, I doubt they will risk a direct confrontation. At least not yet. Not unless they're forced to. They will use their acolytes against us first. And as we've already seen, those can be quite dangerous enough."

"Well, we know that at least one of them is someone who was invited to the party tonight," said Modred. "I'll get a complete guest list from Rydell. I'm not sure how much help it will be, but we'll have to start someplace."

"I think you'll find that your friend Rydell isn't very anxious to see you at the moment," Wyrdrune said. "He called a little while ago. The police were questioning everybody in the club and he said there was an I.T.C. man with them who seemed to know all about us. Does the name Thanatos mean anything to you?"

Modred frowned and shook his head. "No. It's a mage-name?"

"His real name is Bryant Winslow," Merlin said. "He was once one of my students. Now it seems he's a field agent with the I.T.C."

Modred shook his head again. "The name means nothing to me."

"He said he was an old friend of your mother's," Kira said.

"Did he?" Modred said, raising his eyebrows. "How very interesting."

"You think it's true?" said Wyrdrune.

Modred shook his head. "I can't believe she'd have told anyone at the I.T.C. who she really was, much less told them about me, especially since I'm on their 'most wanted' list. And Rydell doesn't know who I really am. So unless this Thanatos is running some kind of a bluff, there are only three other sources where he could have learned that agent Fay Morgan was really Morgan Le Fay and that I was her son. Jacqueline Monet, Sebastian Makepeace, and Michael Blood. Jacqueline would never talk and Makepeace ... no, he may be as crazy as a bedbug, but he's utterly reliable. Besides, I've known both Sebastian and Jacqueline for years and they've always been completely trustworthy. Which leaves our friend, Chief Inspector Michael Blood of Scotland Yard."

"That's what Merlin figured," Kira said.

Modred grimaced. "I never did trust policemen. I should never have made an exception in his case."

"I can't believe that Blood would sell us out," said Wyrdrune. "He helped us, remember?"

"Yes, and now it appears he's being just as helpful to the I.T.C," said Modred wryly.

"Wyrdrune's right," said Billy. "Mick wouldn't give us up. 'E's on our side. It's like ole Merlin said, if Mick told this Thanatos bloke about us, it's because 'e thought Thanatos could 'elp us."

His expression suddenly changed as Merlin spoke through tern.

"There's a simple enough way to find out for certain," Merlin said. "Why not call Blood and ask him?"

"You think he'd tell the truth?" said Modred.

"You always did have a suspicious nature," Merlin said. "That can be useful on occasion, but unfortunately, in this case, it's preventing you from seeing the obvious. We've already deduced that Blood's the only one who could have told Thanatos about us. If he tells us that he's never heard of Thanatos, then we'll know that he betrayed us. If he admits it, then we can simply ask him why."

Modred nodded. "All right. Call him."

Merlin picked up the phone and called the desk. "Overseas operator, please." A few moments later, Scotland Yard had answered and Merlin asked to speak with Chief Inspector Michael Blood.

"I see, sir. And who shall I say is calling, please?"

"Tell 'im Billy Slade."

There was a slight pause, then Blood was on the phone. Billy put him on the speakerphone so that all of them could hear.

"Billy? Is that really you?"

"It's me, Mick. 'Ow've ya been, old sod?"

"Thank God! Where the devil are you? I've been trying to get in touch with you, but your New York number's been disconnected!"

"We're in Los Angeles," said Billy.

"Los Angeles? Why didn't you tell me you . . . wait, you said 'we.' Are the others with you?"

"We're here, Michael," Wyrdrune said.

"Wyrdrune? Is Kira there, as well?"

"Right here, Mike."

"Sebastian?"

"No, he's still in New York."

"What about ..." He hesitated, obviously not wanting to say Modred's name out loud. ". . . our other friend?"

"I'm here as well, Michael," Modred said. "Can you talk?"

"Well, I'm in my office, but it can't hurt to be cautious, you understand? I'd just as soon not use your name on these premises."

"Yes, I quite understand," said Modred. "You said you'd been trying to reach us?"

"Yes, I needed to tell you about a chap called Thanatos, an agent with the I.T.C." Wyrdrune glanced at Modred and smiled.

"Go on," said Modred.

"He came to me recently, asking a lot of questions. Officially, he was investigating the disappearance of one of their agents. Fay Morgan. But he was asking a lot of questions about what happened here, as well. At first, I played it cool, telling him I didn't see the connection between the case their agent was investigating in Boston with what happened here in London, but then he started telling me about the runestones, about Wyrdrune and Kira and Sharif and Al'Hassan and those two fences in New York and the fire in the penthouse of John Roderick. ... He had it all just about completely put together. And he'd tied it in with what happened here, as well."

"And so what did you tell him?"

"Well, at first I stuck with my amnesia story, but he saw. right through that. I didn't know how he knew, but he looked me straight in the eye and as politely as you please, told me I was lying through my teeth. Now I'll tell you, I've spoken to all sorts in my time, from petty thieves to homicidal maniacs to my father's stuffy friends in Parliament and I've always thought I could take just about anyone without flinching, but let me tell you, this chap gave me a dead level stare that went right through to my bones. I tried to put the best possible face on it and I acted all put out. I told the bastard to get out. He didn't move. He simply sat there staring at me with that implacable gaze of his and then he asked me to tell him about the living triangle."

Modred, Wyrdrune, and Kira exchanged astonished glances. Billy simply sat there, stroking his nonexistent beard thoughtfully, as Merlin always had a tendency to do.

"Well, as you can imagine," Blood continued, "that knocked the pins right out from under me. I simply sat there, staring at him, unable to respond. Thanatos just watched me for a moment, and then he proceeded to tell me an amazing story. He said he'd been out to the Carfax place. I hadn't known that. He'd apparently gone over my head with that one, straight to the Commissioner. I hadn't a clue he'd seen it. He'd been in the dungeons, down in that underground temple where it all happened. He told me that he'd sensed indescribably powerful thaumaturgic trace emanations down there, as if an incredible amount of thaumaturgic energy had been released.

"He'd ordered everybody out so that he could get the feel of the place alone. And then told me something that set me right back on my heels. He said he'd seen three auras. A red one, a blue one, and a green one, standing apart in a sort of triangular formation, interconnected by patterns of thaumaturgic force. Apparently no one else could see them, but he could, because he could detect auras. Actually see them. He said he could mine, which was how he knew that I was lying to him earlier. Something about some sort of color shift, I didn't completely understand it all, but apparently it had nothing to do with his thaumaturgic training. He said he'd been a sensitive from birth and that his training as a sorcerer had only increased it."

Modred glanced at Billy. "Is that true?" he said.

"'Ow the 'ell should I know?" Billy said.

"He's asking me, you dolt," said Merlin. He shook his head. "I don't know. It's possible, but it's extremely rare. I never knew that Thanatos was a sensitive."

"Why would he have concealed it from you?" said Modred.

"Difficult to say," said Merlin. "Thanatos never was the most forthcoming of individuals. He always had a sort of curious inscrutability about him. On the other hand, come to think of it, he always seemed to know whenever I was asking a trick question or planning a pop quiz. Go on, Michael. What did he say then?"

"He said he knew that what happened in the States with the theft of the runestones was connected with what happened to Al'Hassan, as well as with the murders here in London and the incident at Carfax Castle. He said that the I.T.C. knew that Al'Hassan was killed while casting an immensely powerful necromantic spell, but they did not know for what purpose. And then he said he had a theory of his own, one he hadn't shared with his superiors at the I.T.C. because he had no proof. He said he was convinced that Al'Hassan had discovered something in that dig in the Euphrates Valley, something apart from the artifacts they found. He'd been down there. And he said there was a wall of solid rock in the deepest part of the excavation, and that he'd sensed something behind that wall, as if a tremendous amount of thaumaturgic energy had been released."

"Did he try to break through it?" Wyrdrune said softly.

"No. He said he was afraid. He didn't know why, but he felt a fear that chilled his bones right to the marrow. And then he looked at me and in a very quiet sort of voice, he said, 'Al'Hassan released something down there, didn't he?

Something very old, and very powerful and terrifying.' He said that if he wanted to, he could put me under a spell of compulsion to tell him what I knew, but he'd rather I told him of my own free will, because he knew I was protecting someone and he had a feeling that the people I was covering for would need all the help that they could get."

"And so you told him," Modred said.

Blood sighed. "Of course I told him. I told him everything. What else could I do?" Modred nodded. "I suppose you had no choice. And what was his reaction?"

"He turned pale and remained silent for a while, then he thanked me and asked me to keep what I'd told him to myself. And then he asked me to get in touch with you and let you know that he was coming. He said to tell you that he would help in any way he could. He said he had a deep personal stake in this, as well."

"In what way?" said Modred.

"Fay Morgan," Blood said. "Your mother." He hesitated. "Apparently, the two of them were lovers."

" What?"

"He showed me a ring he wore," said Blood. "A large fire opal in a silver setting. It was engraved with some peculiar symbols. He said you'd know what it meant."

For a moment, Modred didn't say anything.

"You know what he's talking about?" said Kira.

Modred nodded slowly. "It was my mother's. It was given to her by my grandmother, Igraine. Gorlois gave it to her as a token when they wed." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It means they were much more than lovers. It means they were man and wife."

"Morgana?" Merlin said, astonished. "Married to a mortal?"

Kira stared at Modred. "Then that means Thanatos is—"

"My stepfather," Modred said. "It seems I have a stepfather who is younger than me by some two thousand years."

"I ... I hope I did the right thing," said Blood.

"It seems you had very little choice," said Modred.

"If you need me," Blood said, "I can hop the next plane—"

"No," said Modred. "No, you stay where you are. But there is something you can do."

"Name it."

"Get in touch with Jacqueline. And then call Sebastian in New York. Tell them we're staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel and ask them to get out here right away."

"You've got one of them out there, haven't you?" said Blood.

"No," said Modred. "We have two of them. And perhaps more. Thanatos was right. We're going to need all the help that we can get."

"I'll call them right away," said Blood.

"Good-bye, Michael."

"Good-bye, my friends," said Blood. "And good luck."

It was getting late when Gorman arrived at Spago-Pogo, but the party was still in full swing. He showed his identification to the man at the door, who merely rolled his eyes and said, "Hell, go right ahead. We've had half the police force here tonight already."

Once inside, Gorman, stood near the entrance for a while, allowing his eyes time to grow accustomed to the dim light. The music was loud and the dance floor was packed with I writhing bodies. The bar was packed, as well. Gorman recognized the celebrated actor, Burton Clive, laughing and leaning back against the bar with his arms around two stunning young women. His thick, graying hair was in a state of disarray, his lace jabot looked wilted, and his expensive suit was thoroughly rumpled. The celebrated Burton Clive looked as if he had already done more than his share of celebrating. Gorman made his way over to the bar.

"Mr. Clive?"

"Yes, dear boy, what can I do for you? You want an autograph? Happy to oblige." His eyes were bleary and his balance was uncertain—in fact, it appeared as if the two young women were literally holding him up—but remarkably, that magnificent, stentorian voice literally dripping with Old Vic was as clear as a church bell. Clive was infamous for his epic drinking bouts and it was said that on numerous occasions, he had played demanding leading roles on stage while so drunk that he could barely see. It had sounded improbable at the time, but seeing him now, Gorman believed it.

"No, sir, thank you, but I don't want your autograph." He held up his I.D. "Agent Gorman, Bureau of Thaumaturgy."

Clive squinted at the I.D., but he was clearly incapable of reading it. He turned to the woman on his left and said,

"What's it say, darling?"

"What he said, Bertie," the woman replied.

"Ah! Excellent! Excellent, indeed! An honest-to-goodness sorcerer, eh? I'm about to play a sorcerer, did you know that, Agent . . . sorry, what did you say your name was?"

"Gorman. Phillip Gorman."

"Phillip! Excellent name! My father was named Phillip. Which reminds me ... bartender! Be a good lad and 'phillip'

this glass!"

"Have you see Mr. Rydell?" said Gorman.

"Ronald?" Clive said, swaying back around to face him, leaning against the ample busoms of his support posts.

"Oh, he's gone. Left some time ago, after the police departed. You with that lot? Understand there was some shooting or something. Did somebody get killed?"

"I wouldn't know about that, sir. I was looking for Mr. Rydell."

"Oh, well, he's gone. Come and have a drink."

"Thank you, sir, but not while I'm on duty. Perhaps you could help me. You're familiar with his productions, aren't you? You're currently working on one, isn't that right?"

"About to start filming the role of a lifetime!" Clive declaimed with a wild sweep of his arm that almost pitched him headlong to the floor. "Merlin Ambrosius! Spawn of an incubus! Court wizard to King Arthur Pendragon! Father of Modern Thaumaturgy! Greatest mage of all—"

"Yes, yes, I understand," said Gorman hastily, anxious to forestall an impromptu soliloquy. "Are you familiar with the man who conjured the special effects on his last feature? A man named Brother Khasim?"

"Certainly, dear boy. The Sorcerer Saint of Sunset Strip, they call him. Keeper of Lost Souls! Master of illusion and—"

"Yes, yes, is he here tonight?" said Gorman.

"He left about the same time the Warlock people did. I suppose it wouldn't be seemly for a saint to be seen getting

. sloshed in nightclubs, what?"

"Damn it," said Gorman.

"The other special effects chaps are still around, though."

"Are they? Where?"

"Right over there," said Clive, leaning forward and overbalancing, catching himself at the last moment by putting his palm flat against Gorman's chest. He pointed at the far end of the bar. "Those three chaps over there," he said.

"Bert, Mort, and . . . somebody or other. Always together. The three witches, I call 'em. That's from Shakespeare, y'know. Macbeth! The Thane of Cawdor! The—"

"Right, thank you, Mr. Clive," said Gorman, departing quickly. He hastened toward the far end of the bar and approached the three special effects men. "Gentlemen, may I have a word with you, please?"

"Who're you?" said Joe Gallico, slurring his words slightly.

Gorman flashed his I.D. again. "Agent Gorman, Bureau of Thaumaturgy. I'd like to ask you some questions."

"It's about Khasim, isn't it?" said Mort Levine. "I knew it! I just knew there was something screwy about that guy!"

"What makes you say that, Mr. . . . ?"

"Levine. Mort Levine." He jerked a thumb at his partners and said, "Bert Smith. Joe Gallico."

"Bert, Joe," said Gorman, nodding to each of them. "What makes you think I wanted to know about Brother Khasim?"

"Don't you?"

"Would you answer my question, please?"

"Okay, for the record, I don't like the s.o.b., okay? I never did. All that holier than thou bullshit about saving souls and helping people and he comes muscling in on our business, taking the bread right out of our mouths. ..."

"So you have some personal animosity?"

"Some what?"

"You don't like him."

"Didn't I just get finished saying that?"

"Yes, but you still haven't told me why you thought I wanted to know about him."

"All right," Levine said, "Look, we did some checking, see? There was always something about that guy that rubbed me the wrong way."

"Me, too," said Joe.

"So we did some checking," Bert Smith said.

"Merely because he rubbed you the wrong way?" said Gorman.

"No, it was much more than that," Levine said. "Like, how come he could pull off illusions nobody else could do?

Okay, so he's a sorcerer, which makes him a higher grade adept than anyone else in the business, but even though I'm not an adept, I know a thing or two about magic use. I know that if you pull off a complicated spell, it tends to make you tired 'cause it uses up your energy, isn't that right?"

"Yes, that's right," said Gorman.

"Well, Khasim was never tired," said Levine. "And hell, on our last picture, he popped an effect that should've knocked him out."

"What sort of effect?" asked Gorman.

"He manifested a demon," said Bert Smith.

"He did what?" said Gorman.

"It was illusion," said Levine. "But, damn, you should've seen it. Let me tell you something, it takes a hell of an effect to impress a pro, and that was sure as hell impressive. Never saw anything like it. Landau was so knocked out by it, he gave Khasim a bonus."

"Landau?"

"Johnny Landau, the director. See, the scene called for the necromancer to summon up a demon that was going to attack Jessica . . . that's Jessica Blaine, she was the female lead. She was chained down to mis altar and Khasim was standing in for Jay Solo, who plays the necromancer in the films. Anyway, Khasim was up on this big rock and he was supposed to conjure up this demon effect. And what he came up with didn't look anything like what was in the storyboard."

"It was pretty scary, I gotta admit," said Joe Gallico, nodding over his beer.

"They'd drawn this thing that looked like a werewolf or something, but Landau told Khasim he wanted something really special, really dramatic, and Khasim sure as hell delivered, let me tell you. It was huge, with sparks and flashes going off inside it, like an electrical storm, and it screamed like a runaway express train. Scared Jessica half out of her mind, it was so real."

"Even got the hoofprints right," Joe said.

"What hoofprints?" Gorman said.

"He threw in some hoofprints on the ground," said Bert. "We had a camera crane shooting from a high angle, I guess he thought it would look more real if the thing left hoofprints, only they never showed up on film. For a while there, he had us so convinced, we thought he'd conjured up a real demon, because of those hoofprints, but of course, that would be crazy. Still, it just goes to show you what the hell of an effect it was."

"I figure it should've wiped him out," Mort Levine said, "but he looked fresh as a daisy when it was over. Apologized for scaring Jessica to death, then sauntered off, calm as you please, as if he pulled off tricks like that every day of the week. And that got us thinking. I mean, if the guy's that good an adept, why the hell is he wasting his time in the motion picture business? He could get ten times as much from some major corporation."

"I'll tell you the truth," said Bert, "we never did buy this social worker thing of his. It costs a lot of money to go to school for all those years and then get certified, right?"

"It is rather expensive," Gorman admitted, prodding him on.

"Right, that's what we figured," said Levine. "It's got to put a serious dent in the bank account, right? And most adepts have to get student loans and such. So you gotta recoup, right? Does it figure that somebody like that turns his back on all the money to be made in corporate sorcery and goes in for charity work with a mission?"

"It does seem rather unusual," said Gorman.

"Well, we did some checking," said Levine. "I called in a few favors. And . . . well, listen, can I tell you something off the record?"

"Go ahead."

"We got a printout of his B.O.T. file."

Gorman raised his eyebrows. "Those are strictly confidential. How on earth did you manage that?"

"I'd rather not say, all right? I don't want to get anyone in trouble. Anyway, guess what we found out?"

"He struggled all the way through thaumaturgy school and barely squeaked past his adept certification," Gorman said.

Levine made a face. "Right, of course. Stupid of me. You've already seen his file. Anyway, you said it was off the record. We're not going to get in trouble for this, are we?"

"I'll forget you ever told me," Gorman said, making a mental note to follow up on it and find out how they got their information.

"Anyway, you saw the file," said Levine. "How does someone who barely managed to get certified as a lower grade wizard suddenly breeze through his sorcerer's exam? He never took any additional training. At least it didn't show on his file." Levine shrugged. "I don't know, I thought maybe we'd get something on him, like maybe he'd been convicted of some kind of white collar thaumaturgical crime or something, but there wasn't anything like that on his record."

"Tell him about the mission thing," said Joe.

"Yeah, Brother Khasim's Lost Souls Mission," said Levine. "I don't know what it is with this 'brother' business. Is he hooked up with some religion or what? What is he, a monk? He takes in a lot of money to keep that mission going. Contributions. He's got a reputation now and he's made contacts with a lot of people in the industry who can help him out, but where'd he get the scratch to get the whole thing started up? No one seems to know. And nobody donated that building to him. He paid for it in cash. In cash. "

"You have done some checking, haven't you?" said Gorman. "You seem to be very well informed."

"Well, when you've worked in this town as long as we have, you make lots of connections with all sorts of people," Bert Smith said. "To be honest, we've been worried about our jobs. A guy like Khasim could make us obsolete. We're only being used for incidental effects as it is. On this new picture, Khasim's picking up all the big gags. He's got a lot of people in our business worried, especially some of the lower grade adepts. They've never had to compete with a full-fledged sorcerer before and it he starts cutting his prices and matching what they get, they'll all be out of work."

"Us, too," said Joe, staring deep into his glass.

"You got something on Khasim?" Levine said hopefully. "Has he done something?"

"Just a routine investigation," Gorman said. "But I'd appreciate it if you kept your eyes open and let me know if he does anything that seems at all unusual." He held up his hand and a business card suddenly appeared between his index and middle fingers. "You can reach me at that number. Or ask for Captain Farrell. Anything you say will be kept strictly confidential."

"Sure," Levine said, taking the card. "He has done something, hasn't he? I just knew he wasn't on the level."

"Thanks for your help, gentlemen," said Gorman. "I'll be in touch." He was suddenly extremely anxious to meet Brother Khasim and have a look around the Lost Souls Mission.

CHAPTER Nine

The first one was easy. He caught her strolling west down Sunset, near the Fairfax intersection. Her short skirt was slashed right up to her waist and her spike-heeled boots clicked sharply on the pavement as she cruised in a leisurely fashion down the boulevard, every step a hip shot. He quickly spoke a teleportation spell and vanished, to reappear in an alleyway just ahead of her. He waited till she drew even with him, then he called to her from inside the alley. She paused, hesitating as she peered into the darkness, then said, "Come out here where I can see you." He stepped out of the shadows.

She recognized him instantly. "Oh, it's you, Brother Khasim. For a second there, I thought—" His eyes started to glow with a hellish green fire.

The words suddenly froze in the hooker's throat. The green lambence of Khasim's stare was reflected in her eyes. She stiffened and slowly started moving toward him, into the darkness of the alley. A short while later, Khasim came out alone.

He found his second victim only two blocks farther on. It was late and all the night flowers were out in full bloom. He could pluck them at his leisure. Only there was nothing leisurely in the way he went about it. A sense of desperate excitement was welling up within him and he practically trembled with anticipation as he approached the young girl standing on the corner. She couldn't have been a day over sixteen. His eyes were already burning with green fire when she turned to face him and there was a brief, sharp intake of breath as her mouth fell open with surprise, then her gaze unfocused and she stiffened. Helplessly, she followed him around the corner and into a darkened doorway. There was the soft, dull, thumping sound of something striking flesh repeatedly and she sank down to the ground. Khasim bent over her, working swiftly, and moments later, he was on his way once more, searching for the next sacrificial victim. Behind him, where the young hooker lay sprawled in the doorway, a shadow seemed to detach itself from the darkness and glide after Khasim.

Rebecca Farrell sat staring at Thanatos, not knowing what to say. She shifted her gaze to Ben Slater, who sat across from her at the table in the kitchen of his apartment, watching her somberly.

"Is this for real?" she said.

Slater nodded silently.

Rebecca expelled her breath heavily. "Jesus."

"Jesus has nothing to do with it," said Slater wryly.

"So you're telling me these people, these Dark Ones—"

"Not people," Thanatos said, interrupting her. "At least not as you and I would know them. The Dark Ones are not human."

"Well, whatever the hell they are, you're saying they've been alive for all these thousands of years, kept prisoner in some hole in the ground, hidden in a secret underground temple in the Euphrates Valley? How'd they manage to stay alive?"

"Well, for one thing, they're immortal," Thanatos explained.

"Great," Rebecca said. "How are we supposed to fight something we can't even kill?"

"Fortunately for us, they can be killed," said Thanatos. "Of that, there is no question. Apparently, they just don't die of natural causes, such as old age, for example, or disease. Keep in mind that most of this is merely theory and supposition. I have no empirical knowledge of the Dark Ones, just what I've been able to piece together through secondhand reports and obscure, veiled references in ancient, forgotten thaumaturgic texts. I suspect that what probably happened after the Dark Ones were imprisoned was that their life functions slowed to an almost imperceptible level."

"You mean like suspended animation?" Slater said.

"Probably something very similar; perhaps some form of cryptobiosis," Thanatos said. "I don't know if anybody really knows for sure, except perhaps for the three possessors of the runestones."

"If they're the ones with all the answers, men why aren't we looking for them?" asked Rebecca. "Let's bring them in and hold them for questioning."

"It's rather difficult to detain someone for questioning who's capable of teleportation," Thanatos replied dryly.

"You saw what happened earlier tonight. According to Chief Inspector Blood of Scotland Yard, these people are quite capable of taking care of themselves. Wyrdrune is a gifted, if somewhat erratic, warlock whose natural abilities, when augmented by his runestone, should place him at the level of a high grade wizard, at the very least. Kira is a cunning cat burglar and con artist whose streetwise instincts, coupled with the power of her runestone, should make her a very formidable young woman, indeed. Billy Slade might be a mere boy of thirteen, but if Merlin's spirit has possessed him, then he's become the most resourceful teenager on the planet, and the most dangerous, as well. And as for Modred . . . well, we're talking about a man who's got some two thousand years of knowledge and experience to draw on, a man who isn't even fully human. None of them are, really. At least, not anymore. With people such as these, one doesn't simply walk up to the front door, flash a badge, and expect them to come down to headquarters and answer some routine questions."

"So what are we supposed to do?" Rebecca said. "Sit on the sidelines and just watch?"

"No, most emphatically not," said Thanatos. "By now, we can be reasonably certain that Mr. Rydell has communicated with his new partners and passed on the particulars of our discussion with him. I fully expect that we will be contacted very soon. In the meantime, we need to start compiling information as quickly as possible. Ben from his various sources on the street and you, Rebecca, from the police department. We're looking for certain patterns. Not only murders, but disappearances as well, kidnappings where no demands for ransom were ever received. Somehow, somewhere, a pattern must emerge that will give us a clue where to start looking for the Dark Ones and their servants. It shouldn't be long before Gorman's had a chance to track down the information I requested. Meanwhile, we can monitor what's happening on the Strip. I have a strong intuition that before the night is out, the Dark Ones will make their presence felt.

Gorman pushed open the door to the Lost Souls Mission and stepped inside. It was an unpretentious lobby, with a few potted plants placed here and there and several chairs set back against the walls. It was late and it was very quiet. A somewhat bedraggled-looking young man was bent over his desk in the reception area, reading a lurid horror comic book. Gorman rapped on the desk sharply, startling him.

"Yeah, what is it?" said the young man in a somewhat surly tone. "I mean . . . uh, how can I help you?" Gorman showed the young man his I.D. "Agent Gorman, Bureau of Thaumaturgy," he said, looking the young man directly in the eyes.

"Yes, sir?"

"Is Brother Khasim in?"

"No, sir. He's out for the evening. Is there something I can help you with?"

"I understand that Brother Khasim lives here at the mission, isn't that right?"

"Yes, sir, he has quarters on the top floor."

"I would like to see them, please."

"Sir?"

"I would like to see Brother Khasim's quarters," Gorman repeated. "I would like you to show them to me." His gaze was still locked with the young man's. He didn't blink. Little lights danced in his pupils. The young man blinked twice and flinched slightly, but he couldn't tear his gaze away from Gorman's.

"I ... I'm sorry, sir, but I ... I don't think I can do that."

"Yes, you can."

"I ... I ... I really think. ... I think you'd need a warrant . . ."

"I don't need a warrant," Gorman said deliberately, willing the young man into submission.

"You . . . you don't need a warrant," the young man repeated dully.

"You are going to show me Brother Khasim's private quarters," Gorman said.

"I'm going to show you Brother Khasim's private quarters," the young man said flatly. His gaze had become unfocused.

"If anyone asks what we are doing, you will say that I am from the studio and Brother Khasim sent me back to get some script notes. Now what will you say?"

"Brother Khasim sent you back to get some script notes."

"Good. After you take me to Brother Khasim's private quarters, you will return here and you will forget that I am up there. In fact, you will forget that I was ever here. You will forget my name. You will forget we ever spoke or saw each other. You will not remember anything about me at all."

"I will not remember anything about you at all."

"Take me up there now."

The young man got up somewhat stiffly and said, "Follow me, please."

By the time the first body was discovered in the alley, Khasim had already accounted for four more. He had killed them all within an area encompassing eight blocks and he wasn't finished yet. The raging bloodlust had risen to a fever pitch within him.

By the time the detectives, the assistant medical examiner, and the lab man had arrived to take over from the beat cops who had initially responded to the call, Khasim had stalked and killed three more women. While the lab man took his pictures and filled out his forms and the detectives together with the assistant medical examiner puzzled over the curious markings carved into the dead woman's chest, Khasim's second victim was discovered, only two blocks away, on the same side of the street. The detectives hurried to the scene and found another dead hooker, slain the same way as the first, stabbed to death, with the same curious runes carved into her chest. The medical examiner asserted that both women had been killed within minutes of each other, and very recently, at that. Within the hour. And as they were examining that body, the patrol officers discovered a third one only half a block away. With disbelief, the detectives radioed for backup and started following a trail of bodies that led them east on Sunset Boulevard. All were killed in exactly the same way, all mutilated in the same manner, carved with the same indecipherable markings. They realized that they had to be literally within blocks of the killer as he steadily, diabolically slaughtered his way east toward La Brea Avenue. The scream of police sirens cut the night as they tried to cordon off the area and the people on the Strip, like livestock sensing a predator in their midst, started milling about fearfully, darting across the street, running aimlessly in all directions, and huddling in doorways. In short, doing everything except going inside where it was safe, seeking instead the illusion of safety in numbers, following the herd instinct of the streets.

Back at Ben Slater's apartment, they followed the reports over the police frequency on Slater's portable radio.

"This must be it," Rebecca said, quickly getting to her feet and starting for the door. Slater grabbed his hat.

"Wait," said Thanatos, calmly sipping his coffee and making no move to get up from the table.

"What for?" Rebecca said. "This is just what you were telling us would happen! We've got to get down there right away!"

Thanatos glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. "Rebecca, have you forgotten that I can teleport us directly to the scene in an instant?"

She grimaced sheepishly. "Oh. That's right."

"We can follow the progression of events from here," said Thanatos. "We will listen, and wait, and see what develops. When the confrontation comes, we will be there."

Rebecca and Ben exchanged glances and came back to join Thanatos in the kitchen.

"Relax. Have some more coffee," he said, while voices crackled back and forth over the radio.

"How can you be so calm?" said Slater. "Women are being slaughtered down there even as we sit here and you say relax and have some more coffee?"

"I assure you, Ben, that at the moment, I am anything but calm," said Thanatos, staring into his coffee cup. "In fact, I'm trying very hard to steady my nerves, because I'm rather frightened." He looked up at them. "I have to depend upon the element of surprise, you see, and that means I have to pick my moment carefully. The police must provide the necessary distraction. Because if I cannot strike quickly, decisively, and without warning, then I'm not sure I'll have a second chance."

" This is Unit nineteen, we've got another one! Alley behind the Whip and Chain club. . . . "

"Roger, Unit nineteen, we copy, all units—"

"It won't be long now," said Thanatos, as Slater and Rebecca stood behind him, listening intently. "It seems they've got him hemmed in. Unfortunately, that isn't going to help them."

He turned to the radio and gestured at it. "Attention all units," he said, and a second later, they heard his words repeated over the police band. "Attention all units. Attention all units. The perpetrator is a magic-user. Repeat, the perpetrator is a magic-user. Exercise extreme caution. Locate, but do not attempt to apprehend. Repeat, locate, but do not attempt to apprehend."

"What are you doing?" demanded Rebecca.

"If they try to apprehend him, he may escape," said Thanatos. "Or he may turn on them and kill them all."

" This is Unit twenty-one, suspect in sight, white male, dark clothes, running down alley off Sunset and Alta Vista, repeat suspect in sight—"

"This is it," said Thanatos, getting up out of his chair. He glanced at Ben and Rebecca. "Perhaps you'd both be safer here."

"Not on your life," said Rebecca. "Get us down there. Now."

Thanatos grimaced tightly. "All right. Give me your hands."

Gorman hesitated at the door to Khasim's private quarters. The young man who had brought him up had gone back downstairs and there was no one else around, yet Gorman still hesitated. Carefully, he put his hand out, placed his palm flat against the door, and closed his eyes in concentration. Like a safecracker feeling the tumblers falling into place, Gorman felt the faint surge of thaumaturgical trace emanations through the door. Yes, it was as he'd suspected. The door was spell-warded. He smiled.

He backed well away from the door and turned, looking around the outer office, where the administrative volunteers did all the work that kept the mission going. His gaze fell on one of the heavy wooden desks. He stretched his arms out, spoke a levitation and impulsion spell, and concentrated. The heavy desk started to rise. When it was about three feet above the floor, he guided it around and toward the back of the room, then with a grunt of effort, impelled it hard toward the door to Khasim's office. The desk hurtled across the room and smashed into the door. There was a crash as the door splintered and broke inward and at the same time, a bright, searing flash of light filled the room. Gorman threw his arm up to protect his eyes as the desk was incinerated in an instant. When the smoke cleared, the way was open. Just to be on the safe side, Gorman picked up a chair and tossed it through the doorway. It landed with a clatter inside Khasim's office. Well, so much for subtlety, he thought, as he entered the office. But at least he was inside.

A thorough search produced nothing. Gorman grimaced with disappointment. It didn't make any sense. Why spell-ward the entrance if there was nothing in here to protect? Somehow, he had to have missed something. He searched the office once again, with no more result. Yet he did not give up. He knew he was right. He knew there was something here that Brother Khasim had been anxious to conceal, anxious enough to spellward the entrance with a spell that would instantly kill an unwary intruder. He looked through Brother Khasim's desk again, he tore his bed apart and carefully examined the mattress, he looked through his clothes in the closet. . . and then he spotted the small switch on the inside wall. Why hook up a switch inside the closet, especially if there was no light fixture in there? He threw the switch and there was a soft humming sound. Gorman frowned with puzzlement, and then he noticed that the floor of the closet had started to descend.

"Well, well, well," he said to himself. "How very interesting. Now why would someone want to hide an elevator in a closet?"

He reversed the switch and waited for the floor to come back up, then stepped inside and threw the switch again. The floor started to descend once more. Khasim tried to estimate the distance. Was there a false wall on one of the lower floors? But no, after several moments, he realized that the elevator had gone past the street level and down to the basement level . . . and still lower. What the hell, he thought, there's another basement below the basement? And then the elevator stopped and Gorman stepped out into Khasim's secret underground apartments. He gave a low whistle as he stepped out into Khasim's sprawling living room and took it all in. "Well I'll be damned.

. . ."he said.

And then he saw the bodies.

Officer Zeke Paterno spotted him first. The squad car was slowly cruising down the Strip, Paterno's officer adept partner taking care of the driving while Paterno flashed the spotlight into shadowy doorways and dark alleys. Just as they were passing an alley near Sunset and Alta Vista, Paterno suddenly said, "Stop, Al!" Al Carlson, the driver adept, held the squad car motionless as Paterno adjusted the light. The high intensity beam illuminated a dark figure in the alleyway, crouched down over something . . .

"Jesus, that's a body," said Paterno. "Get on the horn, we've got him!" And before Carlson could react, Paterno was out of the car and running toward the alley.

"Zeke, wait! Dammit, we're not supposed to—" The squad car dropped about a foot to the ground with a jarring thud as Carlson stopped concentrating on his levitation spell and grabbed the radio mike. "This is Unit twenty-one, suspect in sight, white male, dark clothes, running down alley off Sunset and Alta Vista, repeat suspect in sight—"

"Hold it right there! Police!" shouted Paterno, pulling his 9mm from his holster as he ran. The suspect looked up and for a brief moment, Paterno caught a glimpse of a white face, eyes bulging, jaws slack, and then the suspect was off and running down the alley.

"Stop!" Paterno shouted. "Stop or I'll shoot!"

The suspect kept fleeing. Paterno brought his gun up in a two-handed combat stance and fired three shots rapidly. The suspect stumbled but kept on going.

" Damn," Paterno swore. And then he saw the mutilated body lying in the alley. "Oh, Jesus. . . ." He took off after Khasim. All around him, the night was filled with the sound of police sirens as all units converged on the area. The suspect reached the end of the alley, where it T-boned into another alley running parallel with Sunset. Paterno, who like most of his fellow officers was not a marathon runner, was breathing hard as he gave chase. At the far end of the alley, a squad car pulled up, blocking off the exit. Paterno saw the suspect veer sharply to the left, down another alley between two buildings, heading back toward Sunset.

"Stop, you son of a bitch," Paterno gasped as he pumped his arms and legs, trying to close the distance. Breathing hard, he turned into the alley, paused, saw the suspect about halfway down, still running, checked to see that there was no one in the line of fire at the other end of the alley, raised his pistol, aimed carefully, and squeezed off another three rounds. The fleeing suspect went down.

"Gotcha, you bastard," Paterno said with satisfaction.

Behind him, he heard the siren as Carlson brought the squad car around. Another police cruiser came up to block off the mouth of the alley. Red and blue flashing lights reflected off the brick walls as Paterno approached the fallen suspect.

Suddenly, the suspect sprang up with a growl and Paterno found himself face-to-face with something inhuman. Its leathery, batlike face leered at him demonically as it bared its dripping fangs and screeched like a demented harpie. For one fraction of a second, Paterno froze, stunned into immobility, and in that one fraction of a second, the creature lashed out with a clawed hand and Paterno felt the gun plucked right out of his grasp. He only had time for a shocked gasp before the creature tossed the gun aside, grabbed his head between two immensely powerful hands, and turned it around one hundred and eighty degrees, snapping his neck and killing him instantly.

The officers at the far end of the alley opened fire. The creature jerked twice as bullets struck it, then threw out an arm and a bright blue bolt of thaumaturgic energy shot out from its outstretched claws and enveloped the police officers and their cruiser. There was a blinding flash of light and an eardrum-shattering concussion as the police officers and their cruiser exploded in a spray of viscera and shrapnel.

Carlson watched it all with stunned disbelief. And then the creature turned toward him. Desperately, he tried to focus on his levitation and impulsion spell, but fear destroyed his concentration. He threw himself across the seat, tumbled out the passenger side door, and ran right into Thanatos, Ben, and Rebecca, bowling them over as they materialized directly in front of him. Behind him, the police cruiser exploded as it was struck by a bolt of thaumaturgic energy and Carlson cried out as several pieces of jagged metal shrapnel struck him in the back. By the time Thanatos scrambled back up to his feet, the alley was deserted.

Gorman stared down at the bodies of the half-clad women and fought down his revulsion as nausea surged up within him. They had been literally torn apart, savaged as if by some wild beast. Blood was everywhere, soaked into the luxurious, handwoven rugs and splattered on the expensive wall hangings. It looked like a seraglio turned into an abattoir.

In the bedroom, he found implements of perversion that disgusted him almost as much as the grisly sight outside in the living room. He also found the bloody corpse of yet another naked young woman, chained to the wall. So much for the so-called Sorcerer Saint of Sunset Strip, he thought. The benevolent Brother Khasim was a foul, depraved necromancer who kidnapped young girls and kept them prisoner in his underground lair, violating them repeatedly and then sacrificing them in his unholy rites. That such a twisted creature should be a sorcerer and that he should use his training in the thaumaturgic arts for such a bestial, abominable purpose filled Gorman with an outrage so profound that he began to tremble.

His gaze fell on the huge, black-canopied bed, covered with black satin sheets and a black brocade coverlet with the mirror mounted overhead and his lips twisted down in disgust at the thought of what had gone on there. Rage welled up within him, a fury he was unable to control. He swept his arm out in a violent gesture and the bed burst into flames. The fire quickly spread to the canopy and within seconds, the entire bedroom was a conflagration. Gorman retreated back into the other room, turned . . . and then stopped cold.

He was no longer alone.

Huddled, bleeding on the floor, was Brother Khasim. He was on his knees, clutching himself, his breaths coming in sobs. His clothes were dirty and torn, spattered with blood, some of which was his own. He had been shot several times and he was whimpering with pain. He looked up at Gorman and held out a bloody hand.

"Help me. . . ." he said.

" Help you?" said Gorman, barely able to restrain his fury. "I ought to kill you, you son of a bitch!" And then he noticed that Khasim was looking past him. He turned and saw something dark and featureless standing close behind him. It was the last thing he ever saw.

CHAPTER Ten

It was a long night on the Sunset Strip. It began with a murder spree that ended with the deaths of a dozen women and three police officers and to make matters still worse, the perpetrator had managed to escape. Nor was that the end of it. A raging conflagration at the other end of the Strip had destroyed the Lost Souls Mission and it was almost morning by the time the fire was extinguished. When it was over, the routine investigation to determine if arson could have been the cause unearthed the truth about Khasim. They found the concealed elevator, which, along with two hidden ventilation shafts, had acted as a forcing cone for the flames. These, in turn, led them to the discovery of the secret rooms underneath the mission and the charred remains of several more female bodies, as well as the body of one male. The bodies had been burned beyond recognition, but they were able to identify Gorman by his flame-blackened B.O.T badge. The media descended on Rebecca Farrell and the fire marshals. They didn't like being told that there would be no comments until a "full investigation" was completed, but it was what they had to settle for. Outside on the street, Thanatos leaned back against the rear seat of the police cruiser and wearily massaged the bridge of his nose. The first gray light of dawn was starting to show and he was exhausted.

"I don't understand," he said in a weary voice. "Why didn't he call me? What on earth made him go in alone?"

"Gorman probably thought he could handle it," said Slater, sitting beside him, sipping a container of coffee. "And if he'd called you in, he wouldn't have been able to take full credit for the bust. A B.O.T. man beating out an I.T.C. agent on a necromancy case. It would've looked good on his record. Or maybe he just couldn't wait because he was hot on the scent. It's probably the same reason Paterno tried to bring down Khasim all by himself. The game was afoot. They couldn't resist the chase."

"Unfortunately, we're left with no proof that the killer was Khasim," Thanatos said.

"Who else could it possibly be?" said Rebecca, twisting around in the front seat. "What do you think he was doing down there in that secret chamber of his, conducting meditation sessions? With all those chains and handcuffs they recovered from the fire? Those women were murdered in some kind of twisted, necromantic rites. Gorman discovered his nasty little secret and confronted him, so Khasim killed him, too, then set the fire to cover up his crimes."

"It certainly looks that way," Thanatos said, "but what we have is still only circumstantial evidence. Admittedly, it's very strong circumstantial evidence, but it may not be enough to make a charge of necromancy stick, much less multiple murder charges."

"Are you kidding?" Slater said. "How the hell do you figure that?"

"Put yourself in a defense attorney's place," Thanatos replied. "With those bodies burned the way they are, it will be almost impossible to establish what killed them. The defense would almost certainly argue that they probably died in the fire. A fire that could well have been caused by Gorman, for all anyone knows. And there's no way to tie in those deaths with the murders on the Strip tonight. The only one who got close enough to the killer to make a positive identification was Officer Paterno and, unfortunately, we'll never know what Paterno saw because he became one of the victims."

"Maybe Paterno can still identify the killer," said Rebecca. "According to Carlson, Paterno put at least two bullets in him, maybe more. And we've got Paterno's gun. All we have to do is match up the slugs taken out of Khasim and we've got him. I've got an A.P.B. out and we can alert all the hospitals

Thanatos shook his head. "Don't bother. If Khasim is seriously wounded, a hospital will be the last place he would go. Unless he was mortally wounded, he could be healed thaumaturgically and for that he will turn to his Dark Lord."

"What about the fact of the secret rooms themselves?" Slater said. "And all those restraints they found. Chains embedded in the walls, for Christ's sake!"

"Brother Khasim was widely known for his work with addicts," Thanatos said wearily. "The withdrawal symptoms from some of the street potions available today can be quite frightening, often inducing psychopathic behavior. As a defense attorney, I would argue that the purpose of that secret chamber was to treat the most violent cases of potion withdrawal, to allow them to submit to being voluntarily restrained before the most serious onset of the withdrawal symptoms."

"You know, for an I.T.C. agent, you think an awful lot like a crooked lawyer," Rebecca said wryly.

"Virtually all the crimes involving magic use we have to deal with are corporate crimes," said Thanatos. "And multinationals employ entire batteries of crooked lawyers. You have to learn to think like one or else you can't hope to secure convictions. It has a tendency to make one somewhat cynical."

"So where does that leave us?" Slater asked.

"Unfortunately, it leaves us right back where we started," Thanatos replied. "Searching for patterns. Necromancers feed on death. Tonight was an example, only a small example, of what they're capable of. Nor, I suspect, will it be an isolated incident. Brother Khasim was sent out on a rampage tonight, to kill as many times as he could. Sacrifices to increase his Dark Lord's power. Causing a train wreck or an apartment building to collapse would have made that much more life energy available for quick consumption, but so powerful a release of energy might also have alerted the runestones and perhaps enabled them to focus in on the Dark One. One life at a time, one right after another, is a great deal slower, but a lot more surreptitious from the point of energy release and its thaumaturgic absorption, which leaves behind trace emanations that can be detected by sensitives."

"So what does that mean?" said Slater.

"It means the Dark Ones must know the runestones are nearby," said Thanatos, frowning. "They're getting ready, trying to increase their power. The confrontation must be drawing near."

"Then it's time we brought in these people with the runestones," said Rebecca. "If they've really got a way of locating these necromancers, I want to know about it. And I don't care how dangerous the Dark Ones are, I don't want magic-using vigilantes running loose in this city. We have laws for dealing with criminals and—"

"Oh, Becky, for God's sake, stop sounding like a department P.R. flack," said Slater. "You had half the damn police department on the Strip tonight and they couldn't even stop Khasim. And he was only human. Imagine what one of these Dark Ones would be capable of doing."

"So what would you have me do, Ben?" she replied hotly. "Sit back and do nothing while a goddamn mage war takes place on the streets?"

"And just how do you intend to stop it?" Slater asked.

She turned to Thanatos. "You said these Dark Ones could be killed just like a human, right? Guns will stop them?"

"Yes, they can be killed," Thanatos admitted. "However—"

"Then if that's what it takes, the law will do it, not some group of vigilantes. Officially, it's still my case—"

"I'm afraid not," said Thanatos. "After what happened tonight, there's no hope of keeping the lid on it anymore and I have more than enough grounds to officially take charge of the case. In fact, with the death of a B.O.T. agent involved, I have no choice."

"I see," she said curtly.

"Believe it or not, I'm doing you a favor," Thanatos told her. "It's my hide they'll scream for now, not yours."

"Whatever you say," she said flatly. "So what do you want me to do?"

"Coordinate with all police agencies, on the local and on the state level as well, and check for cases involving unsolved murders, serial killings, rituals slayings, disappearances, anything that could indicate necromancy. A pattern is bound to be there. You'll find it. In the meantime, Ben, see what you can learn from your sources on the street. We're looking for any unusual occurrences, especially disappearances of people who might not ordinarily be missed, such as homeless individuals; anything at all that could suggest illegal magic use. The Dark Ones cannot function in a vacuum. They must have their minions, like Khasim. They must have a source of life energy to empower their vile spells. Someone somewhere must know something."

He sighed wearily as the police cruiser pulled up in front of his hotel, the MacDonald Wilshire. It was dawn.

"Do what you want to get things started and then try to get some rest," he said. "For now, all we can do is wait." He left them and went through the golden arches over the hotel doors, up to his room on the forty-second floor. He hoped he was doing the right thing, but he wasn't sure of anything anymore. Perhaps he should have told Rebecca that the bearers of the runestones were not exactly "magic-using vigilantes," that since the runestones were animated by the collected life force of the Old Ones who had made up the Council of the White, they in fact represented an authority older than any human law. However, he wasn't sure she would have appreciated his point. He wasn't sure that anybody else would, either, particularly his superiors at the I.T.C. In fact, there was very little that the I.T.C. would appreciate about the way he was conducting this case ... if they knew about it.

Officially, all the I.T.C. knew was that he was investigating the disappearance of one of his fellow field agents, Fay Morgan. He did not tell them that he already knew that she was dead, killed in a battle with the Dark Ones. Nor did the I.T.C. know that he and Fay Morgan had been secretly married, or that Fay Morgan was really a two-thousand-year-old sorceress named Morgan Le Fay or that one of the world's most wanted criminals, a man known to the I.T.C. only by the name "Morpheus," was actually her son, Modred, the last survivor of Camelot. They did not know about the true nature of the runestones and they did not know about the Dark Ones. That was an awful lot for them not to know, yet despite his sense of duty, Thanatos could not bring himself to tell them. For one thing, he could not be certain it would be the right thing to do. As an agent of the I.T.C., there was no question but that he should have told his superiors about all the information he'd uncovered, but as an adept, he was not convinced that it would be the proper thing to do. He had his oath of office to the I.T.C, but over and above that, he was sworn to the Ambrosian Oath, which every magic-user, from the lowliest warlock to the highest mage had sworn. And in taking that oath, he has sworn not only never to abuse the old knowledge that Merlin brought back to the world, but also to use it only for the greater good. Only what was the greater good in this case?

It was one thing to share his knowledge with people like Rebecca Farrell and Ben Slater, whose auras snowed him that they could be trusted, but if he were to report the results of his investigation so far to his superiors at the I.T.C, it would have to go through normal channels and be classified and filed, analyzed and considered, discussed and verified, subjected to all the slowly grinding processes of a large and unwieldy bureaucracy and, as was inevitable in any bureaucracy, there would be leaks. The information would be certain to get out to an unprepared and unsuspecting public and there would be a worldwide panic. Every magic-user would wind up under suspicion in the ensuing climate of fear and distrust.

Yet, at the same time, the Dark Ones' greatest strength was that the world at large did not know of their existence. It left them free to move among the humans who were once their chattel and whom they hoped once more to enslave. It left them free to gather human acolytes and form a perverse and evil priesthood that would serve them; free to recover from the weakening effects of their eons-old confinement and increase their evil power even more. Thanatos did not know what to do. He felt trapped in the middle, caught up in something bigger and more frightening than anything he'd ever experienced before. And he was too exhausted to think clearly. He turned the key in the lock and entered his hotel room.

And suddenly discovered than he was not alone.

The police cruiser took them both back to the station, where Rebecca assigned detectives to check with their other local and state police agencies, looking for any pattern of crimes that might indicate that necromancy was responsible. In the meantime, Ben took out his little black book and started making calls to sources who had given him information in the past, with instructions to ask around and get back to him through his remote pager the moment they heard anything. The city was just starting to wake up for the next day by the time that they were through.

"You about done?" Rebecca asked him, coming over to the desk that he was sitting at. Slater hung up the phone. "That was the last call. Now it's like Thanatos said. We wait."

"You look tired," she said.

"So do you, kid."

"I am, but I don't think I can sleep."

"Me neither."

"Breakfast?"

"Sure, why not?" he said. "I've got to put something else in there on top of all that coffee before it eats a hole in my stomach."

They went downstairs and Rebecca checked out an unmarked cruiser powered by a thaumaturgic battery. They'd driven several miles before Slater realized that they were heading back to her place. He glanced at her questioningly as he recognized the route.

"We're going back to your place first?" he said.

"I could use a shower," she said. She sniffed. "And you could do with one, as well."

"That bad?" he said.

She grinned. "No, just kidding. But you're welcome to take one anyway. I can put on some coffee and whip us up some steak and eggs."

"Sounds great," Ben said, thinking about other breakfasts that they used to have together. It seemed like a long time ago. He forced the thought from his mind. "What do you make of this whole thing?" She sighed and shook her head as she drove. "I don't really know what to make of it, Ben. It all sounds so incredible. A race of immortals that once lived on this planet and dominated primitive man. It seems so hard to believe, yet it would explain so much about our legends and our mythology, about our religions, about history's unanswered questions, about why some people have powers of extrasensory perception and why some people can easily learn to use magic while others can't do anything, no matter how hard they try."

"Yeah," Slater said with a grunt. "And then there was the other graphic evidence of what was done to Sarah Tracy, not to mention her boyfriend."

Rebecca shuddered. "There've been other murders like that, just as you guessed in the first place," she admitted.

"Same pattern, mostly hookers and street people. But as bad as they were, I'd never seen anything like what was done to Victor Cameron. It was as if he was just. . . shredded. There wasn't even a body, just . . . entrails and blood. God, all that blood splattered everywhere. ..."

"I know," said Slater. "It makes me wonder how the hell you stop anything like that. What can you do with someone who can actually conjure up demons? And while we're on the subject, remind me to ask Thanatos just what exactly a demon is, anyway."

"Gorman briefed me on that at the beginning," Rebecca said. "Don't ask me to explain exactly how it works, because that part of it I didn't understand at all, but as near as I can make out, it isn't some creature summoned up from hell or anything like that. The conjured demon is essentially an alter ego of the necromancer, a sort of psychic projection of his inner personality, what psychiatrists call the id."

"No kidding?" Slater said. "You mean like turning your subconscious self into a monster and sending it out to kill?"

"Something like that," Rebecca said. "Gorman said that in its mildest forms, the principle behind it accounts for such parapsychological phenomena as feeling pain when someone very close to you is injured or maybe having a dream in which a close relative comes to you and says goodbye and you find out the next day that they'd died that night."

"Yeah, I heard of that happening," said Slater.

"Well, according to Gorman, people who have experienced things like that have an innate genetic potential for thamauturgy." She grimaced. "Which I guess could be another way of saying what Thanatos claims, that somewhere way back along the line, one of their ancestors was an Old One. Anyway, say your son gets hurt. The theory is that at that precise instant, perhaps not even consciously, he thinks of you, because you were the one he always came to for protection. And he subconsciously does this projection thing and you feel the pain because he's reached you. Or say your mother's dying. Maybe she's thinking of you at the moment of her death, wishing she could say goodbye, and her projection comes to you in a dream."

"What if your son or your mother hates your guts?" asked Slater.

"You mean can the psychic projection hurt you?" said Rebecca. "No. At least, not according to Gorman. There isn't enough energy involved or something. Even with white magic, a sorcerer would have to expend a great deal of energy, and he couldn't do it without severely depleting himself. But with necromancy, where you use someone else's life force—"

"I get the picture," Slater said.

They pulled up in front of Rebecca's building and she parked the car, flipping down the visor with it's printed

"Police Officer on Duty" card clipped to it, so that the car would not get ticketed or towed away. Her apartment hadn't changed much since Slater had last seen it. She was still an utter disaster as a housekeeper. She didn't apologize for it like most people did, saying "Excuse the apartment, it's a mess; I didn't have a chance to clean." Rebecca's apartment was always a mess and her cleaning methods were sporadic and haphazard, at best. Like many women, Rebecca had a habit of taking off her shoes the moment she came in and they had a tendency to remain wherever they fell when she took them off. As a result, one could find shoes all over her apartment. The rug was covered with long orange-blond hair from her pet snat, Snuggles, a thaumagenetically engineered creature that was half snail and half cat. It had no legs and its rubbery underside would cling to just about anything. To Slater, it always looked like a giant hairball sticking to the wall.

"Snuggles?" Rebecca called as she kicked off her shoes. "Snuggles, where are you, Snuggles?" A thirty-pound ball of fur dropped from the ceiling and plastered itself to Slater's head.

"Aaah! Jesus! Get this hairy slug off me!"

"Ooh, Snuggles, there you are!" she cooed, prying the snat off Slater's head. "Did he scare you, Snuggles, did he?

He won't hurt you, nooo. ..."

"Me hurt him? Hell, I think he gave me whiplash," Slater grumbled, rubbing his neck. He never could understand why perfectly sensible women turned into total mushminds whenever they spoke to their cute, furry little pets.

"Fooood," Snuggles said, sounding like a Munchkin on downers. "Foood, foood."

"You want your food, Snuggles?" said Rebecca in a high-pitched, little girl voice.

"I think he wants his food," said Slater wryly.

Rebecca glanced at him and shook her head in reproof.

"What?" said Slater. "Go feed the little hairball. Meanwhile, I'll take you up on your offer and go grab a quick shower."

"You know the way," she said.

Yeah, Slater thought, I know the way. He sighed and headed for the bathroom. He was brought up short the moment he walked in. He had almost forgotten about Rebecca's bathroom. It seemed to be one of nature's more peculiar laws; the more trouble a woman took to care of her appearance, the messier her bathroom was. Slater's personal toiletries included one bottle of shampoo (no rinse), soap, roll-on deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, mouthwash, shaving soap and brush, razor, and witch hazel for aftershave. He could get the whole kit and kaboodle into one small leather traveling case. Rebecca, on the other hand, had what seemed like a dozen different bottles of shampoos and rinses and conditioners and color highlighters and hot oil treatments and PH

balancers and styling gels and moisturizing agents—and that was only for her hair. Her face required another thirty or forty some odd bottles and tubes and jars, most of which were scattered in profusion on the bathroom countertop. As he stripped for his shower, Slater thought that with all that junk and. all the time she spent putting it on, she had still looked best to him first thing in the morning.

He stepped into the shower and put his face directly in the spray, enjoying the invigorating feeling of the water beating down on his skin. He started to soap himself. His once dark chest hair was now mostly gray. Getting old, he thought. Too old for going on crusades and chasing necromancers and thinking wistfully of a certain police captain who was just about young enough to be his daughter. It had been nice while it lasted. Now, he was just a harmless old friend whom it was safe to ask back to her apartment. At least it seemed that they were friends again. He heard a soft click as the shower door opened and then he felt her hands on his back, her fingernails softly stroking down his shoulders. He turned and she came into his arms.

He knew who they were even before the boy spoke and said, "Good morning, Winslow," calling him by his truename.

He caught his breath and stared at Billy. "Professor Ambrosius? Is that really you?" Billy stepped forward with his swaggering walk, thumbs tucked into his belt. "Nah, it's really me, mate, but ole Merlin's in 'ere, too." He held out his hand. "Billy Slade," he said.

Thanatos shook it and then watched in bewilderment as the boy's entire demeanor underwent a complete change.

"It's been a few years, Thanatos," Merlin said. "I'm pleased to see you've done so well. However, we can reminisce about your student days another time. There's someone here who wants to meet you." Modred came forward, looking at Thanatos intently.

"Modred," Thanatos said softly. "Or do you prefer another name these days?"

"How do you feel about Morpheus?" said Modred, watching him curiously.

"It's my duty to arrest him," Thanatos replied. He paused and smiled faintly. "But I don't think I've ever met the gentleman." He held out his hand. "Your mother told me a great deal about you." Modred raised his eyebrows. "Whereas you come as a complete surprise to me," he said, taking the proffered hand. He noticed Thanatos looking at his chest and smiled. "Is this what you're looking for?" he said, opening his shirt. The ruby runestone was glowing dimly.

Thanatos gazed for a long moment at the stone embedded in Modred's chest, then he looked up at Modred and glanced at the others.

"You must be Wyrdrune," he said.

Wyrdrune took off his hat. The emerald runestone gleamed in his forehead.

"Of course," Thanatos said, nodding. "The green aura." They shook hands and then he turned to Kira.

"And Kira, the bearer of the sapphire," he said. He reached for her hand, then hesitated slightly as he saw the soft blue glow emanating from her palm. He took her hand, feeling the warm hardness of the stone against his palm.

"You were very foolish tonight," Modred. "You might have easily been killed."

"Then you know about what happened?"

"It was on the news," said Modred. "Even if we could have been there, I'm not sure we could have done anything. The police were everywhere and they were only in the way. This is not the way to handle the Dark Ones."

"It was a sorcerer known as Brother Khasim," said Thanatos. He sighed heavily. "I'm afraid he escaped. I'd hoped that if we could have captured him—"

"You would have died," said Modred. "He was not alone. The Dark Ones were with him." Thanatos frowned. "Were? You're speaking in the plural."

"There are at least two of them here," said Modred. "Perhaps there are more. I saw them. They were in the alleyway when the police opened fire on my friends. I wasn't as quick to get out of the way and I caught a stray bullet." And then he added ironically, "You almost killed me, Stepfather."

"It was not my intention, I assure you of that. The police overreacted."

"I've noticed that they often do that when confronted with something that infuriates them," Modred replied wryly.

"Modred's right. Bringing the cops in is not the way to handle this," said Kira. "They're not qualified to deal with a situation like this. They'll only make things worse."

"How much have you told them?" Wyrdrune asked.

"The police? Hardly anything," said Thanatos. "A police captain named Rebecca Farrell knows as much as I do, as does a newspaperman named Ben Slater, but they can both be trusted. Except for them, all anyone knows is that a sorcerer named Brother Khasim, a charity worker and sometime special effects adept, has been discovered to be a psychopathic, murdering necromancer. Officially, no one knows anything about the Dark Ones. Nor about you."

"How much do the I.T.C. and the B.O.T. know?" Modred asked.

"Even less," Thanatos replied.

"Even less?" said Wyrdrune, not sure he heard right.

"Officially, I'm investigating the disappearance of one of our agents," Thanatos said. He glanced at Modred.

"Although I know about what happened to Fay."

"You mean Morgana," Modred said.

"She was always Fay to me," Thanatos explained, a note of sadness in his voice. "I knew her as Fay Morgan for five years before she told me who she really was. She told me the night we were married." Modred grimaced. "Mother always was one for surprises."

"Yes, well, you can imagine what my reaction was. I was staggered. In any case, her true identity always remained our secret, as did the marriage. No one else ever knew." He sighed again. "I found out how she died from Michael Blood."

"Talkative boy, young Michael," Modred said.

"Don't blame him, he had no choice," said Thanatos. "I gave him none. I had already deduced a great deal on my own. He simply filled in the blanks. Anyway, no one at the Bureau or the I.T.C. knows anything about the Dark Ones. And I could never go to them without sufficient proof."

"And just how do you expect to present them with sufficient proof?" said Merlin, taking out his pipe and pouch.

"Did you think you could capture a Dark One? Or perhaps you'd hoped to arrest one of their acolytes? You could certainly make a case for a renegade sorcerer practicing necromancy, but you could never prove a thing beyond that, not about the existence of the Dark Ones. And none of their acolytes would ever dare to testify. Jail would afford them no protection whatsoever."

"Yes, I know," said Thanatos. "I've already had a rather vivid demonstration of that. However, that was not what I intended. I'd hoped to capture Khasim alive because I thought that I could make him lead me to the power behind him."

"And then what?" Kira said. "What would you do? You don't really think you could place a Dark One under arrest, do you?"

Thanatos met her challenging gaze. "I would have to try. I have my duty."

"Oh, jeez," said Kira, rolling her eyes. "We've got a boy scout."

"And what about me?" said Modred. "You know perfectly well who and what I am. Where is your sense of duty as regards arresting me?"

"At any other time, I would arrest you," Thanatos replied, "stepson or not. However, in the present circumstances, the Dark Ones are obviously a far greater threat."

"Then why not inform your colleagues at the I.T.C.?" said Modred.

"Because I have no proof yet."

"I see," Modred continued. "And you only report your findings when you have absolute proof, is that it?"

"No, that isn't it," Thanatos replied tensely.

"Then what?"

"I don't see why I have to explain myself to you. I don't—"

"Getting a bit defensive, aren't we?" Modred said with a mocking smile.

Thanatos bit off his reply and took a slow, deep breath, composing himself. "All right. What do you want from me?"

"To begin with, I'd like for you to be honest with yourself," Modred replied. "Before you can hope to deal with the Dark Ones, you first need to deal with your own internal conflicts."

"What would you know about my 'internal conflicts'?"

"Perhaps more than you might think," said Modred. "I have been observing human nature for about two thousand years and in all that time, I think I might have learned a thing or two. That you are conflicted is obvious. And I don't need to be sensitive to auras to see that in you. As to the cause of your internal conflict, I think that can be traced back directly to your marriage with my mother."

Thanatos stiffened.

"Oh, for God's sake, don't get your back up," said Modred. "You're going to tell me that you loved her. Well, let me tell you that a great many people have loved Morgana over the centuries and it didn't benefit a single one of them."

"She was your mother," Thanatos said stiffly.

"Yes, and her own half brother was my father," Modred replied. "Please, let's not have any illusions about the sort of woman that she was. Morgana was a compulsively manipulative, thoroughly immoral, and totally unprincipled bitch." He quickly held up his hand before Thanatos could reply. "And before you manifest the appropriate outraged response of the loyal, grieving husband, let me tell you that I meant that without any rancor whatsoever. It's the simple truth."

"He's right, you know," said Merlin. "Morgana had her good qualities, to be sure. Believe me, I was in an excellent position to appreciate that. After all, I'm the one who taught her all she knew. About magic, anyway. But Morgana was also a very complex and tortured woman. She was all those things that Modred said, and more." Thanatos glanced at Billy, sitting there and smoking his pipe, tapping it lightly against his teeth as Merlin always used to do. It seemed absurdly surreal to listen to a thirteen-year-old, pipe-smoking street urchin sitting there, calmly and paternally discoursing about his one-time relationship with the woman he had loved, the woman who had been his wife.

"Keeping your marriage a secret was Morgana's idea, wasn't it?" Modred continued.

"Yes," Thanatos admitted. "The I.T.C. has a policy against field agents being married to one another. It could compromise their effectiveness and—"

"Yes, yes, I know," said Modred. "But you were in love."

"We were in love," Thanatos said.

"I have no doubt of that," Modred said quietly. "Otherwise, she would not have given you that ring. Don't misunderstand me. I am not questioning your feelings for each other. But because of those feelings, because she wanted you, Morgana got you to break the rules. She never gave a damn about rules anyway. But you did, didn't you?

True, it was a rather minor infraction, perhaps, but it was the first step. And when she got what she wanted, she told you who she really was. And after that first broken rule, the first secret kept from your superiors, this one was a little easier to keep, especially since it was such a momentous one. How could you tell anyone that you'd married a two-thousand-year-old sorceress?"

The expression on Thanatos's face told Modred he was right.

"I imagine she waited for some time after that before she told you about me," Modred continued, "about who Morpheus really was. And by then you had become more accustomed to keeping secrets, which was rather fortunate, because this one was a little more difficult to bear. One of the I.T.C.'s most wanted criminals rums out to be your stepson. And your wife, his mother, was the agent in charge of his case. Suddenly, without doing anything but falling in love, you had become corrupt. And perhaps you began to wonder if the only difference between you and someone like Al'Hassan was a difference of degree."

Thanatos turned pale.

"Modred ..." Wyrdrune said, taking him by the arm.

"No." Thanatos said tensely. "Let him have his say."

"I'm almost finished," Modred said. "When Morgana died, you probably blamed yourself. Perhaps you believed that if you were forthcoming with the truth, you might have prevented it somehow. Well, you couldn't have. Nothing you could possibly have done would have changed a thing. The bitter irony is that for the first time in her life, she acted in an unselfish way and it resulted in her death. So now here you are, working with the Los Angeles police in your official position as an agent of the I.T.C., only the I.T.C. knows nothing of your actions. Technically, that makes you a renegade agent, but that isn't what concerns me. What concerns me is that I think you are a guilt-ridden man embarked on a crusade to right an entire plethora of wrongs, both real and imagined, to make up for your past mistakes, when in fact the only real mistake you made was falling in love with the wrong person. I frankly don't care about your emotional self-flagellation, but a guilt-ridden crusader might very well get us all killed and that's something I care about very much, indeed."

"Are you finished?" Thanatos said tightly.

"Yes, I'm finished. How did I do?"

"Not badly," Thanatos said. "Not badly, at all." He smiled tightly. "Your mother was right about you. You really are a heartless bastard, aren't you?"

"Quite literally," said Modred. '

"So, you've said your piece. Now I'll say mine. Whatever feelings of guilt I may or may not have are none of your business. The relationship I had with your mother is none of your business, either. After all, you two were hardly what one could call close. My internal conflicts regarding my duty as an agent of the I.T.C. are none of your business, either, although I can see where you may be concerned about them."

"Look, this isn't getting us anywhere," said Wyrdrune.

"No, now you let me finish," Thanatos said. He turned back to Modred. "First of all, I do not see myself as a crusader, and though I grieve over Fay's death, believe me, I am not so filled with remorse that I would throw away my own life. However, I do find myself in a very difficult position, a position that, from the ethical standpoint, is very similar to the position in which I found myself when your mother told me about you. You were quite correct on that point; I commend you on your insight. It was one thing to keep our marriage a secret, because in spite of the department regulations, that was something that really didn't hurt anyone and I didn't think the department had any business regulating the personal lives of its agents."

"How very naive of you," said Modred.

"Perhaps, but that is beside the point. The point is that although it was a breach of regulations, it was something I could live with, even if it did require some rationalization. But you were quite right, it was the first crack, so to speak, in the foundation of my ethics. When I found out about you, that wasn't something I could live with very easily at all. And yet I did, for her sake. So the crack opened a lot wider. But the foundation did not break. I accept the responsibility for the decisions that I made. I may not be very happy about them, but I do not feel guilt-ridden. More fallible, perhaps, but not guilty. Which brings us to the crux of the situation.

"I've come to the conclusion that the existence of the Dark Ones must be kept a closely guarded secret," he continued. "Not only because knowledge of their existence would bring panic to the population of the world, but because it would also completely undermine most of the world's spiritual belief systems, as well. And I do not wish to see a repetition of the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witch trials, where thousands of innocent people were condemned to death. Such a climate of fear would only serve to help the Dark Ones."

"That's a very sensible conclusion," Merlin said, blowing out a long stream of peppermint-scented smoke.

"But knowing what I know, I can't simply sit by and do nothing," Thanatos said. "So I would like to help you."

"You can help us best by not getting involved," said Modred.

"That isn't an option," Thanatos said curtly.

"We aren't giving you any options," Modred replied.

"Wait a minute," Wyrdrune said to him. "Don't we get a say in this too?"

"I'm against it," Modred stated.

"Why? We didn't know about Brother Khasim. He did."

"That's right," said Kira. "He was ahead of us on that one."

"We would have tracked him down," said Modred.

"Yes, but not as quickly," Wyrdrune said. "Modred, you're allowing your personal feelings to get in the way. We could use someone on the inside at the I.T.C. Someone who could obtain information for us, get cooperation from the police. Run interference with the B.O.T. if need be."

"I am perfectly willing to let him do those things," said Modred. "But I'm against his taking an active part in this."

"You let Michael Blood take part," protested Thanatos, "and he wasn't even an adept."

"The question is not open to discussion!" Modred said, raising his voice.

"I'm sorry," Wyrdrune said. "I don't recall our ever voting to place you in charge." Modred spun around to face him, his eyes flashing with anger. For a moment, they simply stared at each other, then Modred said, "Fine. Have it your way. But I'll not be held responsible." He flung his arms up and teleported.

Thanatos took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm sorry," he said "I only wanted to help. It was not my intention to cause dissension."

"I don't think it's your fault," said Kira. "Not directly, anyway."

"I don't understand."

"Modred won't admit it," she said, "but I think he's carrying around some guilt himself. What do you know about that ring you're wearing?"

"Fay . . . that is, Morgana gave it to me. On our wedding night. It seemed important to her. She said she'd had it for a very long time."

"For at least two thousand years," said Kira. "Modred said it belonged to her mother, Igraine, who received it on her wedding night, from Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall. He was the youngest member of the Council of the White. The last of the Old Ones."

"I had no idea," Thanatos said, looking at the ring.

"You should have seen his face when Michael Blood told him about the ring," said Kira.

"I still don't understand."

"Don't you?" she said. "For all the distance between them, he still loved her. And he himself never felt loved. Only used."

"Ah," said Thanatos. "I'm beginning to see. Her giving me this ring implies a depth of feeling that she never had for him. So he resents me."

"No, he doesn't resent you," Kira said with a wry smile. "He's jealous of you."

"May I see that ring?" said Merlin.

Thanatos walked over to the boy, took the ring off, and handed it to him. Billy turned the ring over in his hands several times examining the runes carved into the setting, gazing deep into the large fire opal stone.

"Curious," he said. "You mean you never felt it?"

Thanatos frowned. "Felt what?"

"The power," Merlin said. "The power in the ring."

"What?" said Thanatos, raising his eyebrows.

Merlin handed it back to him. "You don't sense anything now?"

Thanatos took the ring back and stared at it. "No. Nothing."

"And you're a sensitive, too," said Merlin. "That's very interesting."

"What is it?" Wyrdrune asked.

"The ring's enchanted," Merlin said.

" How? " Thanatos said. "What sort of an enchantment?"

The boy shrugged. "I haven't the faintest idea," Merlin said. "But whatever it is, it's a spell that's at least as old as the runestones. And now I suggest that you ring room service and have them send up some breakfast. We have a great deal to discuss."