Waking the Moon

just in pairs, but in threes and fours and fives and serpentine lines too long to count, although there was something oddly sexless about their motion: it was like they were just another part of the machine, tins vast human engine thundering through the old boathouse like a juggernaut.

It was too much to hope that she’d be able to hold out against it. Within minutes she was moving too, and if she’d worried about being recognized she soon forgot—hers was just another shining face, another pair of arms and legs flickering in the blinding strobe lights. She let the river of light flow across her closed eyelids, a spectral wash of purple and black. When she opened her eyes a moment later she saw a strange tableau against the far wall, frozen in the brilliant glare of the strobes.

It was Virgie and Lyla and several other women and young men. They stood together, not moving, not even engaging in the incessant nervous gestures of drinking and mopping sweat that, as far as Annie could see, was the closest anyone here came to actually standing still.

This crowd was standing still. They were utterly motionless, and they were staring at Annie. In the center of the little group was one figure that really stood out—quite literally, since he or she was head and shoulders taller than the rest. Annie slowed her dancing to a sort of halfhearted swaying, staring boldly at the others, daring them to keep looking at her.

They did. Virgie and Lyla stood by the figure in the middle, their faces stern and watchful. The others formed a half circle around them. Most of the women were young, their bodies taut and muscular as Lyla’s; though one was much older, with greying hair pulled into a coil on the nape of her neck. Boys and girls alike, they all had tattoos. Like a brand, grinning crescents on cheeks and shoulders and swelling biceps.

Hah! real Moonies, thought Annie. She tried to keep her gaze fearless and disdainful, tried to keep moving. But those watchful eyes made her shudder. Like the multiple eyes of some patient spider, the way they just kept staring, like they had all the time in the world to wait for her to tire and weaken. And the frenzied crowd roiling about her only made it worse—she could scream and thrash all she wanted out here, and they’d only think she was having a good time. And for sure nobody was going to call the cops.

She glanced around uneasily, looking for Helen. Probably went out onto the beach to cool off. Annie turned back to her motionless sentries.

They hadn’t stirred. They were still in their silent half circle, staring. It was the one in the center that made Annie’s blood freeze. Tall, almost seven feet tall, with broad naked shoulders rippling with muscle. Yet it had breasts, too, small swelling breasts each tipped with a dark nipple. It had a narrow waist and hips, shadowed so that Annie couldn’t tell what it wore, or even if it was a girl or a guy. It had no body hair at all that she could see; nothing except for a pair of breasts more suited to a thirteen-year-old girl, and beautiful long auburn hair. A wingless watchful angel struck down from its pediment. A fallen seraphim.

A black angel.

Annie swallowed. So what the fucking hell is she—or he, or it—doing here, and why is it watching me?

As if in answer to her thoughts, the tall figure looked away. Lyla and the others turned as well, as though they were all bound to it by invisible cords. Before they could look back and see her, Annie darted to where a bank of speakers rose above the dance floor.

“Whoa, Nellie.” She caught her breath and leaned backward, until she was hidden between the speakers. From there she could watch them without being seen; from here they looked like just another group of partygoers.

So maybe that’s all it is, she thought, a little desperately. Just some of Angie’s girls from Brown, and their friend the Incredible Miss Hulk.

Then, in the darkness, someone begin to sing.

All that is holy is thine
All that is meat
All that flowers and gives birth
All that is fecund.
Darkness is thine
The stealth of the hunter
That strikes in the field…

A frail, quavering, voice—an old man’s, or a woman’s?—impossible to tell; but hearing it Annie shivered.

All that rots in the earth
All that is lovely
All that decays
Is thine, Devourer!
Is thine, Great Sow.
Haiyo! Othiym!
Othiym Lunarsa

The song flowed through Annie and she trembled.

All that is beauty,
All that is bone
Is thine, Ravaging Mother
All You have loved
All that is best
Is thine, O Beautiful One.
Haiyo! Othiym!
Othiym Lunarsa

As abruptly as it had begun, the song died away. Annie stood motionless with dread—it had done something to her, devil-music, she had been turned to ice or stone! Then across the room a screen door banged open. A gust of sharp salt-smelling wind raked her face. She sneezed, clapped a hand over her mouth, and shrank against the speakers. The spell was broken; she could move.

And so could the black angel.

Annie gasped. It really was as though a statue had come alive, some beautiful malefic creature, half-gargoyle and half-gigantic child. From here she could watch it striding through the crowd, pulses of crimson and white marbling its bare arms and chest. Now and then it paused, one foot poised above the floor, its great head swaying back and forth like a mastiff’s. Annie was too far to see all that clearly, and she was certainly too far away to hear, but she had a horrible certainty that it was sniffing for something.

Once it stopped, and slowly turned. Annie almost fainted—it was staring right at her, it saw her where she crouched in the shadows. The tip of its tongue flicked between its lips, a tongue white and fat as a mealworm; but abruptly it looked away again, as though it had scented bigger prey, and strode off.

Behind it, Lyla and Virgie and the rest trailed in alert silence. Annie let her breath out, shuddering. Whatever it was hunting, it wasn’t her—yet. She dared another peek out onto the dance floor.