vibrant with terror. Her screams had echoed through the darkened

mall, which was illuminated only by the burning braziers placed

around it at various points. But her frenzied screams had been to

no avail. No one could hear them up above. The tiled floor of the

pool, once filled with water, was now painted with the sign of the

pentagram, the Seal of Solomon, with the altar standing at its

center.

Kanno’s eyes were glazed as he stood over the body of his victim,

spattered with her blood. He felt numb with disappointment. All

those months of preparation… What could have gone wrong? There

was no written record he could check, no scroll or ancient book in

which he could look up the spell and see if had missed something

somehow, because the spell had been completely of his own

devising. Yet he had drawn upon ancient and authenticated

sources, assembled the spell painstakingly and carefully,

empowered it with the life energy of his victims… It should have

worked!

The thought of starting over filled him with anger and

frustration, but if there was one thing Kanno had learned over the

years, it was patience. To the patient man comes everything.

Somewhere, somehow, he had made an error. He would go over it

once more and start from the beginning. He would not accept this

failure. He would go back to the Ginza, where the young people

prowled at night—the young ones always had the most vibrant life

force—and he would start anew. He sighed with resignation and

turned away from the altar…

… and she was standing there, just beyond the circle, outside the

pentagram. Standing there and watching him.

For a moment he simply froze. It was unthinkable that anyone

could have known about his sanctuary, much less penetrated

through to it. The only entrance was carefully, magically concealed

and warded with his strongest spells. Only a sorcerer—or

sorceress—much more powerful than he could have defeated them.

And that simply couldn’t be. He stared at her with shock and

disbelief.

She was not Japanese. She was tall and slender, with long,

flaming red hair and skin that was a shade of copper-gold unlike