V
A clawed hand reached into his dream, and shook him awake.
Hawk-That-Settles started up in his cot, the blanket falling away from his nakedness, and the claw was around his heart, squeezing.
He forgot his dream, but the world he awoke to was nightmare enough.
The room was full of moonlight, and Krokodil was standing there, cloaked by her hair.
He saw a woman, but he felt the presence of a ghost.
She spoke, in her old voice. 'Something is coming through,' she said. 'We must fight again.'
He didn't know what to say. He had emptied a bottle before stumbling to his cot. His thinking was muddied by sleep and
She walked over to the bed, seeming to glide, her hair rippling.
She knelt, hair parting over her body as she stretched her arms out to him. Pale in the light of the full moon, she was lovely.
This was part of the story of the Moon Woman. His father had told him many times of the lucky brave whom the Goddess selected as her lover, and of the many heroic deeds he would later perform.
He wanted her—not just physically, his entire spirit wanted to join with this unearthly creature—and yet he was afraid. When her cool fingers touched him, he stiffened, and shrank away, feeling the stone wall behind his back.
She was not offended by hjs reluctance, and slipped easily into the narrow cot, pressing the length of her body against his.
Underneath her hair, she wore nothing.
She kissed him on the lips, passing a little of her cool to him. She wasn't even wearing her eyepatch. His eyes open as they kissed, he found himself looking past her fluttering eyelids, first at her clear, green right eye, alive and intelligent, then at the blue crystal facet of her optic burner, dead and deadly. He shut his eyes, and she sucked his tongue into her mouth. Her hands moved up and down his body, tracing the lines of old sandfighting scars, probing the untidiness under his right lung where his ribs had been broken and set out of true.
He touched her, smoothing her flesh. Krokodil felt different from Jesse. He could no longer feel the machinery inside her, as if it had been digested, truly becoming one with her living tissue and bone. Her skin felt silky and cool like a beautiful snake's, and her muscle tone was superb, no longer that of a soldier but of an athlete, a dancer.
With Jesse, lovemaking had been often hurried, rough. She hadn't known her newfound strength, and often left him bruised or even bleeding. They had found pleasure in sex, but no true union. Had their son been born, his spirit would have been divided against itself, the product of two people too wrapped up in themselves to care fully for each other. Now, with Krokodil, it was different. She was confident enough to take him slowly, to caress and cajole him, to prolong their climaxes. Hawk couldn't think of himself as he moved together with her. The memories that came to him were of her; no, they were
Jessamyn, Jazzbeaux, Jesse, Frankenstein's Daughter. He loved all the fragments of the person she was still becoming…
…if only, he wondered, he could love Krokodil.
When it was over, they lay awake in each other's arms, their bodies too charged and relaxed for sleep, and Hawk's fugitive spirit returned, plunging him back into himself.
They didn't move. The moonlight fell on their bodies, dappling them as if with a skin disease.
Hating himself for it. Hawk wondered if he was being rewarded, consoled or persuaded.
The moon set, and daylight inched into the room.
'Tonight,' she said to him. 'It will come. Hawk-That-Settles, you must help me get ready for it.'
VI
The Inner Circle sat around the table, nervously waiting. Elder Beach was doodling on a notepad, crosses, goats, and skulls with Josephite hats. Roger Duroc stood by the door as Nguyen Seth walked around the room, taking a full, slow circuit of the table. He seemed to pause momentarily behind each Elder, and to a man they tensed as if expecting a killing blow.
'Brothers,' said Seth, assuming his seat. 'I have gathered you here to demonstrate that the Path of Joseph is never smooth.'
The Elders mumbled in collective agreement. Seth smiled, and adjusted his mirrorshades. He still seemed bleached from his spell in the tank, and the mirrorholes made his face look like a grinning skull.
'We must make sacrifices if our Great Work is to be achieved.'
Someone said 'amen,' and other people nodded.
'Blood sacrifices.'
This was nothing new.
Seth signalled to Duroc, and he stepped forward.
'Please take any belongings you have left on the table off,' he said.
Beach picked up his pad. Elder Hawkins, the financial comptroller of the church, shifted his briefcase. The table was covered with a stiff circle of linoleum. Duroc rolled it up, and took it away.
The table beneath was inset with a series of shallow channels, all feeding into a central funnel.
Everyone looked at the hole in the middle of the table. Suspended in the air by no apparent means was an irregular lump of crystal. It spun slowly, silvery chips in its core catching the light.
Duroc dimmed the lights. The Inner Circle were enraptured by the crystal.
'This is a simple tool for the focusing of our spiritual energies,' Seth said. 'It is not especially elaborate. I did not foresee that such a great effort on our part would be necessary until some time nearer the fulfilment of our purpose, but M. Duroc has done his best with the materials at hand.'
Nobody turned to look at Duroc. He knew this was where the spooky stuff began again.
The crystal rose a little, floating a few inches above the level of the table. It pulsed now, seeming to change its solid form as it spun, faster and faster.
'I would ask you to concentrate your prayers on the Cynosure.'
Beach was sweating, but could not take his eyes away from the crystal. The others mainly seemed hypnotized, completely lost in the Cynosure's spell.
There was a blot of darkness in the centre of the Cynosure now, an absence of matter.
'Roger,' Seth said. 'Bring it to me.'
