"Which is?"

"Are you sure you want to hear this? Don't say I didn't warn you the victim is put on his stomach, not his back slits are made between his ribs, and his lungs are pulled out through them. He is left that way until he dies which is usually hours to days; basically, until he dies of shock or his lungs dry out."

The Chief was taken a bit aback by her matter-of-fact recitation. "Whoa nice people. That is a little like this 'un, ain't it?"Again she shook her head. "I told you, these people are absolutely serious and absolutely fanatical about what they do. This just doesn't match the 'M-O,' as you'd say. The closest I can come and what I'm going to be following up on if you want me to is this is something like the rites Aleister Crowley developed. Or maybe just maybe some outlawed Hindu cults. The thugee cult in particular."

"Who's this Crowley? Can we get aholt of 'im?"

"Well, his followers would say 'yes,' but I have severe doubts about their sanity." Di managed a wan smile. "I'm afraid he's been dead for a good long time."

"But he does still have followers?" The Chief pounced on that bit of information.

"As they say, 'there's one born every minute.' Yes, Crowley still does have followers. The main difference between what we have here and Crowley's rituals, is that Crowley left the sacrifice alive, rather than cutting out the heart as a grand finale presuming the poor devil he'd been slashing didn't bleed to death. It was the spilling of blood that was important, not the death. The Hindu cult of Kali is almost a better bet; they did cut organs out of their victims, they did tend to torture before killing, and they also decorated their sacrifices. Trouble is, I haven't heard even a rumor of a single thug that's what they're called in the entire United States."

The Chief carefully removed his mangled cigar from between his teeth and smoothed it between his fingers while he looked Diana up and down.

"Well," he said, canting his head to one side, "you seem to know what you're talkin' about, anyway.

Tell me somethin' missy can you take orders? Take 'em when they're given, and not go asking questions until there's time fer questions?"

Di nodded emphatically. "Of course," she replied. "You don't joggle an electrician's arm and you don't ask questions when you might be under fire."

The Chief grinned and stuck the cigar back in his mouth. "Missy, you got a good head on you fer a woman an' a nut-case expert. I'm thinkin' we're gonna get along. All right, boy "

For the first time in this conversation he acknowledged Mark's presence.

" your little lady here is on; no holds barred, she's ours, she gets what any critter on the squad gets. I want you two in my office 'bout ten ack emma. I'm thinkin' this case is gonna need some special handlin', and I'm thinkin' I'd better set somethin' up now t' do that, 'fore it's too late."

"Yes sir," Mark responded. "Ten a.m. it is."

The Chief wandered off to see to the removal of the body. Feeling that they had been dismissed for the evening, Mark gave Di a quizzical look.

"In the car," she said, shortly. "This place is literally making me sick."

Since the Ghia was parked only a few yards away, it wasn't long before Mark's curiosity was satisfied.

They sat, side by side, in the silent car, until Di cleared her throat and began to speak, hesitantly.

"I've seen uglier corpses, love," she said, staring out into the darkness beyond the windshield and rubbing her hands along her arms as if she felt chilled. "This was more than just an ugly death.

Everything I told your chief was true this was a ritual of power. It was more than that. It was a ritual of invocation."

"Invocation? Of what?"

"I don't know; it doesn't correspond with anything I've ever run into before, either myself or by hearsay. I can get a general sort of picture just from the power currents that have been set in motion, but every time I try to get something more than a generality, I just pull a blank. This is just one of a series of rituals, I think; there have been some before, and there will be more unless we can put a stop to them. They will all be blood-rituals culminating in death, and intended to bring something into full manifestation. What I don't know. But the manifestation it's close; it's very close."

She regarded him with troubled eyes, light from the parking-lot lamp contrasting with shadows in the hollows under her cheekbones.

"There's something else bothering you and I think I know what."

"Hm?"

"I've been with you on other hunts; you've never had problems pinpointing bad vibes before this.

You're good; you may be the best I've ever seen, inside or outside the law. So why did you have so much trouble even finding this place especially with the amount of emotional anguish that must have been here? Why was the trail so cold to you? That's what I think bothers you the most.""Bingo," she said soberly. "Right on target. This thing has me badly worried because even though this must have released a tremendous amount of power as well as the emotional turmoil I didn't pick up a thing. Not a glimmer. I tracked this by a s.n.a.t.c.h of precognition and a 'dead' spot that shouldn't have been here."

Mark whistled. "Good Lord whoever they are, they're shielding like crazy! Then that means they really do know what they're doing!"

She nodded unhappily. "Exactly what I told your chief. These people whoever they are are for real. And because they're for real, they are far more dangerous than your chief realizes."

After they had watched the Homicide and Forensics crews clean things up and shut the operation down, there didn't seem anything more that either of them could do. Di wasn't being particularly talkative, and it was getting late....

"I'll tell you what," Di said finally, "I think my best bet would be to start at the beginning. Why don't you get me all the records on 'John Doe' homicides and animal mutilations for the past six months no, make that a year "

"Sure," Mark agreed, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand, and turning the ignition key.

"Just Di, I've been up since 5:00 a.m., can't it wait until tomorrow?"

"Where's your stamina?" she teased. "You used to be able to do better than this!"

"Darlin'," he drawled, "Let me tell you a simple fact of life. After thirty, the warrantee runs out.

After thirty-five, parts start falling off. And I need some sleep before my radio runs my battery down."

"Okay, okay. Can you stay awake long enough to get me back to your aunt's place?"

He backed out of the parking slot and sent the Ghia sedately on her way. "I don't have to the Lady in Red already knows the way. You know, just like old times."

Di shuddered theatrically.

As he'd half expected, his aunt was waiting up for them. Mark suspected that she was not at all certain that Di's presumed virtue was safe in the hands of her nephew. She opened the front door before Di could get her key out of her purse.

"Heavens, you're awfully late," she said, with a world of unspoken questions in her eyes. "I thought you'd just gone out to eat."

"We did but Homicide found what looks like one for us at Bachmann Lake Park," Mark answered.

"You know I've got a radio receiver in Lady. We've been out there most of the night."

Aunt Nita ushered them both into the entryway; Mark was about ready to fall over, but he answered all of his aunt's questions with fairly good humor. After all, now that she'd found they'd been out examining mutilated corpses, and not a.s.suaging Mark's l.u.s.t, she was rather embarra.s.singly relieved.

"Not that I was worried, mind," she said, realizing that her concern had been a bit too obvious and attempting to cover herself. "But "

"It's all right, Aunt Nita," he said, too tired even to tease her. "I should have warned you that we might be keeping some really oddball hours. I just didn't think that it was going to start this soon."

"Heavens, here I am keeping you standing around in the hall Mark, would you like some coffee, tea "

"Something with enough caffeine in it to get me home safe would be right welcome about now," he admitted, as she led them back into the kitchen. "Di?"

"Tea, I think," she replied, "If it's not an imposition. I've got some research to do before I hit the hay I wish I could have brought more in the way of books with me than I did, but I can at least make a start."

"I wish you'd been able to finish your degree work, Mark," Aunt Nita said wistfully, as she started hot water for tea. "I know you do a lot of good where you are, but I wish there had been enough money for you to have become a lawyer like we planned."

"Is that what your original major was?" Di asked curiously.

Mark shrugged, and selected a teabag from the a.s.sortment his aunt offered. "I'm not certain now I would have gone through with it, especially not after getting involved with your little group. As it was, instead of detective work I almost went into Bunco "

"You'd have been wasted there," Di admonished, spooning honey into her tea.

"Maybe but I would have been able to separate the phonies from the few with real abilities, and see that we hustled the ones that deserve being hustled."

"Small potatoes," she replied, as Aunt Nita dropped into a third chair at the table, plainly fascinated.

"Just because we rousted out a couple of phony mediums at college, and it seemed like it might be interesting you can take it from me, it gets old real fast, Mark."

"One of those phony mediums was a real killer!"

"And who was the one that pegged her? 'Twasn't me. You're where you belong, love." She turned to Mark's aunt, tapping her spoon against her cup to emphasize her point. "Your nephew has a real gift for sensing things wrong, Aunt Nita. That was why he called in the Hartford cops on that wretched creature back in college. She was preying on sick little old ladies, first running the usual seance scam on them, then getting all their portable wealth away from them under the pretense that she needed it to keep the 'contacts' going. She'd take everything: cash, jewelry, even the family silver. Well, that's not unusual, as Mark could tell you, but when she'd taken them for all they had, this lovely lady gave them farewell cups of foxglove tea before anyone found out she'd milked them dry."

"Simulated heart failure," Mark nodded. "And Hartford PD hadn't seen the connection."

"That's because they weren't working our end of it," Di pointed out. "They hadn't known the old dears were even seeing a medium. We were the ones who saw them coming and going, and it was you who noticed how many of Madame Thelma's clients ended up on the obituary page."

He shrugged.

"And I have the feeling," Di continued doggedly, "that it's going to be connections where no one else has noticed connections that is going to hand us the answer to this one. It may be my knowledge and my gifts, but it will be your ability to put chestnut hulls together with feathers and see a stuffed and roasted goose."

"Maybe " he yawned again. "But if I don't get some shuteye, I'm not going to be able to tell the chestnuts and the feathers apart."

FOUR.

The phone rang.

Mark was nearly half awake; he tried to ignore it, to bury himself somewhere in the middle of his mattress, but it wouldn't stop ringing.

"Go away," he growled at it. "Shut up!"

It didn't shut up. Somebody was very persistent.

Cursing Alexander Graham Bell and all his descendants unto the ninth generation, he reached for the handset on his nightstand, missed, reached again, and got it finally on the third try.

"If this is a siding salesman," he mumbled, "I'll be sending a hit man around to take you out in one hour."

"It's Di, Brighteyes." The voice in his ear sounded far too alert and cheerful for his liking. "Having conquered the intricacies of the Kabala and the twisted philosophy of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, I have crowned my career by mastering the Dallas bus system. I'm down at the stop at the entrance of your complex. I figured I'd better give you warning before I pounded on your door. You might have shot me."

"I still might," he grumbled.Her only reply was a trill of laughter as she hung up.

He fumbled the phone back into place and peered at his clock. Seven a.m. The Chief wanted them in his office at ten. Gag. Better go stand under the shower for a while.

After five minutes of hot water followed by one of cold, he was feeling somewhere around the level of h.o.m.o erectus. With a transfusion of coffee he might reach h.o.m.o neanderthalis.

Clothing.

He'd managed to find everything but his shoes and more important, drag the clothes on over his weary body when Di tapped on his front door.

He knew it was Di before he even got within five feet of the door, and not by any paranormal method, either.

"Pardon me, sir," came a high-pitched, squeaky voice, only partially m.u.f.fled by having to pa.s.s through an inch of wood, "but I'm working my way through Gramarye School, and I wondered if I could interest you in a complete set of the translations of the Necronomicon? Bound in genuine simulated humahide with fourteen-karat goldlike tooling? A priceless heirloom designed to be pa.s.sed down to future generations, should you live so long?"

Less than ten hours ago the owner of that voice had been kneeling at the side of a very mangled corpse, doing a valiant job of not throwing up. Now she was making jokes...

d.a.m.n, she's got the same defense mechanisms cops do, Mark thought in surprise. Which tells me she has been poking around some pretty grim situations the past few years. Well. She always was tougher than she looked I think I can stop worrying about her taking care of herself "Does this translation include the commentaries and footnotes by Robert Bloch?" he called back.

"I don't think so, sir. August Derleth, but not Robert Bloch."

"Not interested." He opened the door.

Di was leaning up against the doorframe, an impish grin transforming her face to pure gamin. "Well, how about some Gargoyle Scout Cookies, then?"

"Only if they have caffeine. Get in here, before my neighbors start to talk."

She skipped inside and he closed the door behind her. "You mean they don't talk now?"

"Of course they do but if wholesome types like you start showing up, making me get up early, they just might think I've gone respectable."

"Good G.o.d, we can't have that." She took a quick look around the living room; there wasn't much to see. Mark's one extravagance was his entertainment center; the rest was Salvation Army tables, foam flip-chairs, and futons. "Lord, Mark, you're slipping this is cleaner than my place."

"Don't look in the bedroom; there's things growing in the corners." He staggered into the kitchen to start the coffee maker; she followed noiselessly behind him.

"Well now," he asked, before she crossed the threshold, "How is the one love of my life?"

"I trust you don't mean me "

"Bite your tongue," he replied, scooping up a small, furry handful of delicate charm from the middle of the kitchen floor and turning back to Di. "You forfeited your claim on that position when you called me at 7:00 a.m. Di, meet Treemonisha."

"What a love!" she exclaimed, holding out her hand for the cat to sniff. Treemonisha, a dainty sable Burmese that Mark had found in an alley one night, examined the proffered fingers with aristocratic care. She determined that Di was appropriate company for Mark, and bestowed her approval with a tiny lick and a rub of her head.

Mark put her down on the floor and filled her bowl with chopped chicken from a bag he extracted from the refrigerator. The acknowledged queen of the household resumed her stately progress toward breakfast, a progress she'd interrupted when the doorbell rang.

"Getting to be a real homebody, aren't you? Furniture, cats, microwaves "