Waking the Moon

fingers. “Rules? What rules? Do you, like, turn into a pumpkin or something?”

Angelica had laughed softly, drawing her hand away and leaning forward to kiss the top of his head. “No, sweetie—you do.”

She pursed her lips, tracing the edge of the frame with a fingernail. It had been Hasel’s destiny to the for Othiym. She leaned forward to blow a little thread of ash from the burning sage, then pushed aside Hasel’s picture, moved several others where she could see them better. Frames of heavy darkened silver; frames of real tortoiseshell and delicate coral. Within them were more photographs: faded Polaroids, amber-tinted Kodachrome, crisp black-and white.

Mostly they were pictures of Dylan and her late husband, taken during her long Mediterranean exile. But here was her beloved uncle, at his villa near Poggibonsi, and there was her father, and there her beautiful cousin Rafael—her first cousin, twice-removed, ah! he had been so handsome, she was truly sad when he died—and here was another of poor sweet Hasel.

And one of Annie Harmon, taken by Angelica herself during one of their afternoon interludes. Annie looking very cross but also rather stunned, her worn old quilt pulled up around her breasts. And here was the young Sweeney Cassidy—not caught in flagranti delicto like Hasel or Annie, but looking quite gamine with her cowboy boots and cropped hair. And here was a more recent picture of Annie, clipped from an issue of the Advocate and stuck in the corner of a large framed picture of Dylan’s graduation.

“Come here, you,” murmured Angelica. Gingerly she teased the newspaper photo of Annie from the frame. She had been focusing all her will on Annie lately. She did not dare confront Annie as she had Hasel—Annie was another woman, after all, and had a better understanding of Angelica’s true nature. She would be wary of a meeting with Angelica.

And rightfully so! Angelica thought, her mouth curving in a smile. But even Annie Harmony could not escape the naphaim. She took Annie’s photo in one hand, and with the other picked up the lunula. For a moment a pang of real sorrow made Angelica’s eyes fill with tears.

Because while each sacrifice was holy, and each one made her stronger and stronger still, it was only those who had loved her who made the Goddess real, who made Her epiphany complete. That was the bridge between the worlds of Othiym and Angelica di Rienzi Furiano—a bridge formed of all those who had truly loved her, those who had died for her over the centuries. And for each of them she had wept, as she had wept for Hasel and Rafael and Oliver; as she would weep for Annie, and Dylan. As Ishtar, Au-Set, Isis, Artemis or Cybele, as the thuggees’ Kali or Wilde’s Salome, she had always received a tribute of souls—and blood. The bridegroom who lay with her but one night a year, and died before sunrise; the man who served as her consort for twelve lunar cycles and then was slain within her sacred grove. Even in modern times her ancient worship was not utterly forgotten. All those nineteenth-century artists who had painted her as sphinx and panther and vampire sensed the truth of it: Woman was a perilous country.

Angelica blinked her tears back, and ruefully smiled. In the tarnished mirror nestling between the photos, her reflection smiled back. Oh, men had feared her then, and women too—they had always feared her! But they had loved her as well, and perished for her willingly.

And so they would again. And each death, each loving offering, would be another stone in the bridge that swept from Angelica to the Queen of Heaven. Already she had received so many, nameless men and boys. But then there had been Hasel, an ardent sacrifice if ever there was one. And Oliver…

Her heart beat too fast, thinking of Oliver. She forced herself to stare at Annie’s photo again, Annie with her freckles and her cowlick and her soft white skin. Tonight, perhaps, Angelica would finally see Annie again. When the Goddess came to her, when Othiym would be her. And someday soon, she would see Dylan, too, would cradle him within her as she had all those millions of others…

She took another deep breath, the scent of coriander and sage making her think of temples made of clay and earth and dung, of malachite and mammoth ivory. She raised her head to stare at the swollen globe in the eastern sky.

“For I so love the world that I will give unto You my only Son,” she whispered.

With Dylan’s death it would be done. Her epiphany would be complete: Othiym would awaken from her aeons-long sleep.

I am wife and mother and sister of Osiris
I am mother of Horus
I am She that riseth in the Dog Star
I am she that is called Goddess by women!
For me was the city of Bubastis built
For me was raised the City on the Hill
I divided the earth from heaven
I put the stars in their courses
With me doth true justice prevail!
I am the Queen of rivers and winds and the sea
I am the Queen of war
I am Queen of the thunderbolt
I raise the sea and I calm it
I am Queen of the storm
I overcome Fate
I am the secret mouth of the world
I am the word not spoken
Othiym haiyo, Othiym Lunarsa!

Her words faded into the plaintive strains of the string quartet. Her reverie ended when the telephone chimed. Angelica smiled, that would be Dylan, calling to tell her how his first day at the museum had gone.

“Hello?”

“Angelica?”

A woman’s disembodied voice rang hollowly from the speaker. Not Dylan after all but Elspeth, her agent, calling from New York. Angelica heard traffic noises in the background: she’d be on her car phone. “I’m sorry to call so late, but there’s been some trouble.”

Angelica’s heart stopped. “Dylan? Is he all right? What—”

“He’s fine, Angelica. It’s not him, it’s—”

A pause. “Last night. A bunch of your girls were at some kind of party at an abandoned house in Cape Cod. Some big gay hangout on the beach up there. I just saw it on the news. A boy was murdered, a bunch of kids found the body and—”

“Who was it?”

“They don’t know, the body was so mutilated—”

“No! The girls, which girls?”

Elspeth’s voice rose edgily. “I have no idea, Angelica. But the way they described it, I’m certain—”

Angelica twisted her pen between her fingers, heedless of the ink spilling from its seams to stain her nails peacock blue. “Did they bring any of them in for questioning?”

“No, of course not.” Elspeth gave a sharp laugh. She had been one of Angelica’s earliest initiates, and was now at the center of a Circle in Manhattan’s publishing district. “But they did note similarities between this death and that boy in Lubbock. And the New York Beacon mentioned Cloud.”

“Cloud’s death was a—a horrible accident.” Angelica let her voice catch, so Elspeth could hear how the memory still upset her.

“This kid’s death was a pretty bad accident too,” Elspeth said dryly. “Apparently the body was so mutilated they had to use dental records to identify him.” Another pause. “Do you know someone named Annie