Pump up the volume on “Gimme Shelter,” right before Merry Clayton shrieks out her solo about rape and murder. Now, it’s just a few steps away.

“OK, intrepid disciple,” Khalika murmured, almost to herself, “it’s that time. I think we can both agree, a woman’s work is never done.”

We pulled up at the entrance to the narrow fissure, and I stood, transfixed, as Khalika lifted her arms and slipped on, like a surgeon, a pair of blue vinyl gloves she’d extracted from her jacket, along with a black cosh. She tapped the instrument on her right palm a couple of times. “Crude, I know,” she whispered, “but an OK opener. Wait here, tiny dancer, you don’t need to see this yet. I’m goin’ in. You’ll know when it’s over.” Then she handed me a flashlight.

“Hold this please. But don’t use it unless I tell you.”

She cocked her head to one side like a hawk about to descend on a mouse, and curled from the street into the Stygian blackness of the alley, barely illuminated by the barest sliver of a new moon. I heard the faint sound of the girl sobbing, begging him to let her go, that he could have her bag, that she had a kid waiting at home.

I thought then, right in the middle of it, how I always knew somehow that this had been coming, like the faintest rumbling of a distant train, a tornado. I never wanted to confront Khalika, because along with my fear was this almost sexual thrill I got from thinking of what she might be up to out there—those long stretches where she’d come back looking like a sated cat. Now, here it was—no more imagining or vague twinges of dread about what this rogue goddess might be up to. I saw it like a lightning flash before the house goes up in flames.

She’d been painting the town redder than a daimon’s eyes.

And now I would be her accomplice, would bear witness.

It didn’t seem to matter anymore. I’d never felt better or freer in my entire stunted life, one made possible with blood-soaked money from my stepfather’s pursuits, the same money that delivered Mercutio to me, and the paddock in which he galloped and bucked.

Seconds later, I heard a faint, wheezing croak—“What the fuck… cunt?”—and then a blunt thud, like a hammer striking a melon, followed by the clang of metal on concrete. He had fallen over a garbage can on his way down, was now splayed out in the cracked, litter-strewn alley with one whack to the back of his head. All the windows lining the alley remained dark.

Almost immediately after he hit the pavement, his proposed meal came barreling straight toward me, nearly running into me, hardly seeing me. Her breath was ragged, her eyes glazed with shock. She had startled a rat, and it scampered across my shoe. The girl’s adrenalin sent her sprinting down the street, back the other way, to the relative busyness of 7th Avenue, until she was swallowed by the night. She didn’t even scream. Still, there wasn’t much time.

You’ll be OK now.

I wasn’t even aware of the cold anymore. Blood pounded in my ears as I sucked in big gulps of frigid air. There was no way I could stand there a second longer. Against Khalika’s advice, I started to make my way into the alley, flashlight in hand.

And then I heard it.

It wasn’t a human sound, nor was it that of any animal I’d ever heard. It was like an alien wind, a sustained, unearthly wail containing both ecstasy and grief. It poured out into the dark sky, pierced it like a blade through black silk.

“OWWWWWWOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo… OWOOOOOOOOOooooo…” The howl tailed off at the end like the mourning whistle of a long-departed train to Gehenna. I was rooted there, and I saw that these ungodly sounds were coming from my sister’s throat, seemed, suddenly, to be emanating from my own as well, as if in sympathy.

There was Khalika. She was crouched over the inert lump on the ground like a gargoyle on the parapet of some ancient Parisian church. Her jacket gaped open, her head thrown back as if in the throes of orgasm. The cords in her neck were distended and gray-blue. I shone the flashlight on the scene. Her contorted face, in the focused beam of light, was the color of pewter.

She bayed again, and a single light blinked on in one of the windows above. She was the lone she-wolf on a ridge line, in some part of the back country that man hadn’t yet invaded, conquered, ravaged.

I caught the glint of her switchblade, watched as she applied it to the lump’s bony naked back, glowing calcium-white. The streetlights flickered again but stayed on. The light in the window went dark. She made quick work of whatever she was doing to his back before she peered up at me, undisturbed by my arrival.

“I think he shat himself,” she informed me cheerfully. “I can smell it. Flashlight off, please.”

This was it—that instant when everything changed again—like what happened after the invasion. Back to Dollar Man, those four enterprising classmates. Time froze, then picked up again, drawn out and unreal, the dream you can’t fully awaken from. If I lived for eons, I would never forget her face in that alley. It contained all the frigid cruelty of all the gods in the pantheon.

Had my nightmares foretold this?

Khalika looked up from her labor, told me she was almost done, that I should keep watch. I could hardly move. The lump was barely moaning. The wind lifted Khalika’s hair, swirling it around her terrifying face. Somewhere on our journey, she had removed the blond wig, but I couldn’t say where or when. It was then that I, or something independent of me, conjured Kali—the Goddess—in that narrow defile. I saw the tip of a red tongue emerge slowly from between dark-blue lips and lengthen, until it was level with her skull necklace, then farther, until it almost skimmed her waist.

“Was it good for you?” I heard her inquire, all solicitous concern to the prone, pale lump. She pulled him around to face her, hissed, “Look at me, sweet prince. Look at your final sex partner. I choose this new morning to spare your life. Don’t waste it trying to find me. And tell your friends.”

Khalika dropped him back on the cracked pavement. He could only moan now, and drool.

“Please… stop… I’m… dead.” He wept like an infant.

“Not quite,” Khalika said, before rising from her crouch. “Only your dick is. Oh… and your arms and legs.”

I looked up. All the windows were dark.

“OK. We need to get the fuck out of here.”