lost control today. When I channeled those last few moments of Ariel’s life, I couldn’t keep myself separated. She kept breaking through and taking over. I know it scared the hell out of Ben.”

“Oh, Rowan,” she whispered. “It scares the hell out of me too.”

Felicity was filled with an inherent desire to make everything well and at the moment, she wore a deeply empathic grimace. I watched her close her eyes and felt her ground and center, directing a cool wash of energy over me that appeared in my mind as a soothing green light. Soon, my dull headache subsided, and the last knots of tension uncoiled from my neck and shoulders.

“Have you eaten?” she asked me.

“No,” I answered. “Not yet.”

“I’ll go make you something.” She leaned forward and lightly kissed me on the forehead. “You just relax.”

I vaguely remember the smell of corned beef hash and eggs wafting into the room as I drifted into tortured sleep.

Screaming.

Screaming forever with no pause. Distorted noises. Sounds of ripping and tearing. The forever tortured banshee wail. I am in Ariel Tanner’s apartment. The kitchen. I am standing in the kitchen. The room is bathed in a surreal wash of white. I shade my eyes against the stark brightness.

Silence.

Clear, unbroken silence.

My heart pounding. Thump thump, Thump thump, Thump thump. Louder. Fighting to escape from my chest. Blood rushing in my ears, pushing back the silence.

Fear.

Pure, unadulterated terror.

“ Please come in,” a voice.

I turn to face the direction of the voice. Ariel Tanner is standing before me, radiant and lovely in a white lace gown. She smiles at me.

“ Rowan, how nice to see you.” Her voice floats mellifluously, displacing the rushing in my ears. “It’s been so long.”

“ Ariel?” I question.

She jerks spasmodically, and the smile flees her lips. Her eyes grow wide and she looks down. A spot of crimson appears on the high neck of the lace gown and begins growing. Spreading. Her mouth falls open in shock, and she looks back at me with questioning eyes. The vermilion stain waxes unceasingly, covering her chest.

“ Why, Rowan?” she mouths. “Why?”

Darkness.

Falling. Wind rushing past. Faster, faster, faster…

An unearthly sound. A demonic chord growing stronger.

Impact.

I’m standing in Ariel Tanner’s bedroom. Everything is cast in an eerie blue light. Her body is spread across the bed, her dead eyes staring at me. I walk toward her, and they follow me. The bloodstains appear black in the supernatural light. A sound at my back, slow and rhythmic, but unintelligible. I turn. A figure in a robe is there lighting candles.

“ Who are you?” I ask, but my voice is drowned out by the muffled chant.

I take a step forward and the figure disappears. There is a sound like a crashing wave, recorded on tape and played in reverse. The murmur is behind me now. I turn again, and the robed figure is on the opposite side of the bed. The figure is pointing at me. The chant becomes louder, and though disjointed in its cadence, clear.

“ All…Is…Forgiven. All…Is…Forgiven…”

“ Why?” a voice drifts over the chant.

I look down to see Ariel’s mutilated corpse. Her lifeless eyes glare back at me and her mouth slowly animates.

“ Why, Rowan, why?”

An endless scream.

I awoke with a start, my hair and clothes drenched in a cold sweat. Felicity was once again sitting next to me on the edge of the sofa, deep concern creasing her brow and sad tears clouding her eyes.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, immediately worried by the expression on her face.

“Yes,” she sniffed. “I’m all right. The question is are you going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I think so.”

“You kept saying ‘Why, Rowan, why’, over and over,” she told me as she intertwined her fingers with mine, then wiped away a tear with her free hand. “All I could feel from you was fear, and I couldn’t wake you.”

“How long was I out of it?” I asked with a sigh.

“About half an hour,” she returned. “What’s going on? You’ve never done anything like this before.”

“I don’t know. Probably just a bad dream.” I reached up and brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. “The things I’ve seen in the past twenty-four hours would give anyone nightmares.”

“It’s more than that,” she told me. “You and I both know it.”

I lightly caressed her cheek. “Never can fool you, can I?”

“This isn’t going to stop until you find the killer, is it?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.

By some miracle, I actually slept. No dreams, no visions, no nightmares. It was only an hour, but at least it was peaceful. Upon waking, I re-heated and practically inhaled the meal Felicity had made for me earlier. I never realized corned beef hash and eggs could taste so good. After eating, I parked myself in my upstairs office with a solid stack of reference books. The Expiation spell had been readily recognizable to me, even considering the killer’s sickening variations, but the rest of it was only vaguely familiar. I knew from past reading that flaying and vivisection of a live sacrificial victim were components of the invocation rites performed by ritual magicians of days long past. What I wasn’t clear on was what he might be trying to invoke or why. I felt that if I could pin these facts down, I might have a clue about what he would do next. Whether or not this would be important to the police, I also didn’t know, but it was important to me.

It became quickly obvious after only a few moments study that the healthy pile of books held none of the answers I sought. Reference material about The Craft didn’t deal with the horrors I had only recently witnessed, and any other historical texts in my possession touched on it only briefly. Feeling this avenue now closed, I pushed the books off to the side of my desk and switched on my personal computer. A few keystrokes and mouse clicks later, I was logging in to my local Internet service provider and merging with the electronic fast lane of the information superhighway. I navigated through the various starting pages and came to rest at my objective, a database search screen. I began my quest for information by typing in the keywords HUMAN SACRIFICE and clicking on the SUBMIT icon. If my service provider happened to be randomly monitoring this line, I mused silently, they were probably thinking I was some kind of psychopath. The status lights on the modem flickered quickly, and the screen re-painted itself, displaying the online addresses of the various matching World Wide Web sites.

The majority of the web pages listed dealt with historical text and benign non-literal references such as those sacrifices one person makes for another. I was simultaneously pleased and demoralized by the listing of sites that purported to be reservoirs of information regarding active religions that encouraged the actual sacrificing of a human victim. Upon closer inspection, they were obviously no more than idle electronic chatter, but they contained information I felt might be useful. Still, I was violently disgusted by the fact that anyone would claim to subscribe to such beliefs. The world really didn’t need any more sickos than it already had.

When all was said and done, I had conducted several searches of the “Web” using keywords ranging from BLOOD SACRIFICE to FLAYING. With each of these searches turning up a listing of site addresses, I easily investigated over one hundred web pages within a few hours. The information I gathered held references to historical events and dead religions, as well as fictional books and horror movies. All of it told me that I was on the right track in my belief that the killer was practicing for an invocation ritual, but it still didn’t tell me who or what he was trying to invoke.

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