It is 1942 and a secret group within the Nazi SS is on the hunt for objects of the occult, hoping to harvest their power for wonder weapons to win the war. Its leader, Gruppenfuhrer Karl Weitz, has more than military might behind him. He has recruited the Ochre Witch, an Eastern European sorceress capable of adapting what they seize to serve the Reich’s needs.

Only one team can stop the Axis powers from winning World War II. Army Major Ray Hawkins is tasked with creating the Office of Supernatural Directives to stop these fanatics. He assembles a team that includes a female WASP pilot, an enlisted man with a passion for language and puzzles, a mysterious American ex-pat from the French Foreign Legion, and a young Romany woman who will need to embrace the mystic Gypsy teachings she’s spent her life despising. Their first mission unfolds in Tunisia, where Weitz and the Ocher Witch plan to release a djinn the locals call the Devil in the Desert. It wields the power to spread debilitating fear. If Major Hawkins and his band cannot stop the djinn, it will sow panic among the Americans and Rommel’s Afrika Korps will crush the invasion force. But Hawkins’ new team has many weaknesses, and Weitz and the Ocher Witch will exploit every one of them to win.

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John paced back and forth a few yards from his truck, uncertain what to do.

Through his connection to the djinn, John knew it had been at work on Rommel all day.

Had that given the Allies enough time to take the initiative and turn the tide? He had no idea what the logistics were to get a routed army from the defense to the offense. But he knew the power of the American fighting spirit, and once the djinn stopped crushing it, that had to count for a lot.

“You have no idea what you are doing,” a raspy woman’s voice said.

He looked up to see a ghostly figure of the Ochre Witch floating a foot off the ground a few yards away. Her cape swirled at the edges though there was no breeze.

How could she find me? John thought. Daciana’s hex bag…

…was in the German uniform shirt I’d shed.

“I warned you that you were walking into your own execution, and now you have. You can’t control the power the ring wields. It wasn’t made for the weak, the ignorant. Can’t you feel it burning you away inside right now?”

John did feel weak. He attributed it to hunger or lack of sleep. Was the power of the ring chewing him up inside? He could imagine his organs darkening and shutting down.

“Weitz could barely manage it,” she said. “And you know you aren’t half the man he is. If someone chopped your fingers off, you’d be crying in a corner, not fighting back like he did. This thing will consume you soon, and leave a shriveled corpse behind.”

“Then I guess I’ll die saving American lives,” John said.

“I’d rather not wait for that to get my ring.”

John ran for the side of the truck where he’d abandoned his Axis uniform in a pile. He grabbed the shirt with the hex bag in the pocket.

The witch rushed toward him. But at several feet away, she slammed to a stop like she’d hit an invisible wall. She looked confused, then enraged. She pressed forward again, but got no further. She snarled in fury. Then she closed her eyes and raised one hand. She reopened her eyes.

“A hex bag? That’s what stopped me back at that estate as well. Found some protection, have you?”

John smiled in relief. “A little.”

“You will find it is very little indeed.”

The witch backed off and swept her hands across the ground before her. She uttered a few lines of an unintelligible incantation.

The sand at his feet shifted. A yellow scorpion several inches long emerged. It flexed its pincers at him. The stinger on its curled tail quivered.

Then a wide arc of sand surrounding him stirred. An army of scorpions crawled to the surface. A yards-wide writhing carpet of pincers and stingers blocked any escape.

“Your hallucinations can’t hurt me,” John said.

“These aren’t hallucinations.”

A scorpion scrambled forward and jumped on the toe of his leather boot. John stomped it with his other heel. Scorpion splattered all over his shoes. The insects were indeed real.

“One sting is painful,” the witch said. “A hundred would be living hell. For the few moments you stayed alive, that is.

Russell R. James was raised on Long Island, New York and spent too much time watching Chiller, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and Dark Shadows, despite his parents’ warnings. Bookshelves full of Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe didn’t make things better. He graduated from Cornell University and the University of Central Florida.

After flying helicopters with the U.S. Army and a career as a technical writer, he now spins twisted tales best read in daylight, including horror thrillers Dark Inspiration, Q Island, and The Playing Card Killer. He authored the Grant Coleman Adventures series starting with Cavern of the Damned and the Ranger Kathy West series starting with Claws. He resides in sunny Florida. His wife reads his work, rolls her eyes, and says “There is something seriously wrong with you.”

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