Takahashi screamed and clutched at his chest. He gasped for air,

sank down to his knees on the tatami mat, then pitched forward

onto his face, dead.

Crude, thought Kanno, an execution of technique lacking in style,

but nevertheless effective. When the body was discovered, it would

appear as though the old man had died of a stroke. At his age, no

one would have any reason to suspect otherwise. And Kanno had

made certain that there would be no record of his visits here. No

one would know and his secret would be safe. Now, all that

remained was the completion of the spell over which he had labored

so long and hard. He dressed quickly. He was anxious to get back to

his sanctuary and begin the final preparations.

Soon, the dragon’s coils would writhe.

CHAPTER One

Failure. Abject failure.

Kanno stood over the altar in his hidden sanctuary below street

level, naked, the knife in his right hand dripping blood onto the

floor. The altar over which he stood had once been a fountain in the

center of the underground mall, a circular pool inlaid with tile, with

a short wall around it on which patrons of the mall could sit and

with a work of unimaginative abstract sculpture done in bronze

placed on a stone pedestal in the center. The pipes had run up

through the sculpture, so that the water could cascade down over

its plane surfaces. All around the fountain were the small shops

that once held boutiques and bars and coffeehouses, but that had

long been standing empty, shrouded in dust and shadow and

infested with large rats. It was like a miniature, underground ghost

town, surreal in itself, but rendered even more surreal by the sight

of Kanno standing nude over the pedestal where the sculptured

fountain had once stood.

He had removed the fountain, blasted it right off its pedestal, and

now the slab on which it had once stood was stained rust red with

the dried blood of his victims. A corpse lay upon it now, the nude

body of a young woman that had, moments earlier, been alive and