Evil Ways (37 page)

Blinking rapidly, he looked toward the pentagram, where the four remaining candles had been reduced to smoking pools of melted wax, and saw that the same fate had befallen the two candles that had been burning atop the altar.

Hassan el-Ghaffar let loose a long groan that combined despair and panic in roughly equal measures, as his befogged brain finally caught up with the dreadful reality that his eyes were showing him.

The center of the pentagram was empty.