Chapter 15

Dashiell entered the building and showed his Library of Congress ID. He then headed back into the depths of the labyrinthine library. The place smelled of an odd mixture of old paper and furniture oil. He headed to the room that contained the B section of the call numbers. That’s where the books on magic and superstition were located. If he struck out there, he always had his government ID that would get him into the more restricted section, where the Bureau’s old texts were kept.

He studied the symbolism of the tiger and didn’t like what he found. In India, the god Shiva was known to wear a tiger skin when in his aspect as the destroyer. It was this aspect of Shiva that Oppenheimer invoked when he saw the first atomic bomb – I am become death, shatterer of worlds.

Could whoever he was looking for be trying to conjure up a God? That would explain the effort to keep the knife pure. That was the sort of power that would require purity in the harvesting of ingredients.

But summoning forth a god, while possible, was extremely difficult and even more dangerous. In fact, it was not something that could or should be tried alone. So perhaps he was looking for more than one culprit.

Suddenly, something clicked in his mind. Of course. He had seen marks of three candles on the ground at the zoo. He had assumed that they were three separate focus points to control male, female and tiger cubs. Apparently, he’d been only half right. Those candles had been used by three separate people.

This had its own comforts and fears. It was comforting to the extent that it meant that he wasn’t dealing with a truly powerful warlock or witch. That had been bothering him ever since the zoo.

On the other hand, if he was correct, it made this new theory that much more possible. Witchcraft was a funny thing. Witches and warlocks, working together, were capable of much greater feats than either one working alone, even if they were working on similar spells. When you started messing around with mystical numbers, it got even more powerful. There was a reason that Charmed had three main actresses. Circles of 3, 7 or 13 witches could bring about truly powerful magic.

That was why the Bureau always made sure it had 273 witches or warlocks available in D.C. at all times. When combined, this circle, made up of all three mystical numbers, could do anything. But it took the organizing force of a government to bring together that much magical ability.

If it were Dashiell, he wouldn’t even risk calling forth a god with less than 7, and he’d prefer 13. And even then, he’d stick to the more benign end of the pantheon. Calling up anything more serious, he’d want at least 21 or 39, a combination of two of the three numbers.

To do anything less would be insanity and risk loosing a destructive force on the plant that nothing could stop. Ever since the Administration closed down the Bureau, the agents had scattered to the four winds.

Dashiell had the sudden sinking feeling in his gut that he couldn’t afford to get this wrong. He had to stop whoever was doing this before they could complete their work.

But how?

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