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eclipsed moons and bloodred falcon’s claws. There was power in the velvet and satin, and as he lowered the hood over his hair, his scalp tingled. Surges of what felt like electric shocks skittered from his forehead to his toes and back again. He flicked his fingers, sending luminescent green sparks into the air. An almost subsonic hum enveloped him, a bass backbeat to the driving rain outside. Then he turned to face Marie-Claire.
    She and he, the two illicit lovers, had planned this night for almost a month. Her dull, weak husband was out of town and her daughters were both at a sleepover. The fact that the coast was clear was more evidence to him that this was going to be an especially memorable Lammas.
    Not that she knew it was Lammas; he had never shared his magic use with her. He had simply tried to draw power from their sexual encounters. It had not worked very well. He had been surprised anddisappointed. . . . It was said that in each generation of witches and warlocks, one of each family was the strongest. None of the combinations he had pursued and encouraged—himself with Marie-Claire; Eli and Nicole; Jer and anybody—had yielded a harvest worth cultivating. Michael wondered if, along with forgetting their legacy, the Cathers-Cahors magic had lain dormant for so long that its power had been significantly diminished.
    But this night had augured well for bringing forth the Black Fire . . . if he, Michael, presented the God with suitable sacrifices. A witch, no matter how weak, was always a prize. Her soul would certainly be worth something in the underworld. . . .
    Warding his Porsche Boxer so that no one saw him drive to her home, he’d listened to the Grateful Dead, drumming his fingers on the dash, loving the irony of “Dead Man’s Party”—
“walkin’ with a dead man over my shoulder
”—figuring Laurent was somewhere with him, in spirit if not manifestation.
    Once through Marie-Claire’s front door, he’d swept her into her bedroom—she had had no scruples about the fact that this was her marriage bed—feeling, somewhat to his surprise, remarkably tender toward her. This was their last time, although she didn’t realize it. She was going to be dead in a matter of hours,and he wanted to give her something to remember him by as her soul went screaming down into Hell, the home of all unrepentant adulterers.
    He’d suggested they go into the living room, and she would have gone anywhere with him by then, even outside into the pouring rain.
I’m that good
. She loved cabernet; he’d drugged her glass of vintage wine while she wasn’t looking rather than bother with a spell. If tonight was going to work, he needed to save every bit of magical power he had. He hadn’t yet decided if he would let Marie-Claire die unconscious, or if he would wake her up so that she could feel the flames. Laurent would want her to suffer, of course—he could make points with the old boy that way.
    Nobody can hold a grudge like my ancestor
.
    Now, as the storm slammed her house and the angels wept over her morals, he stared at her, stirred deeply by her loveliness. Then resolutely he opened his briefcase and pulled out his athame, handling the dagger with reverence and caution. The double blades were jagged and rough but very, very sharp, and they bore the stains of an enormous number of sacrifices.
If the walls of my spell chamber could scream, that thunder outside would be a whisper in comparison
.
    Like all good—or evil—practitioners of the Art, he had forged his athame himself. Once it had beencreated, he had fed it his own blood. Marie-Claire had cried out in shock when she’d first seen the scars on his chest and upper thighs, never dreaming they had not been caused by falling through a plate-glass window when he was seventeen—which was what he’d told her—but by giving this magical knife the taste for rituals of