And then I saw what it was, saw what She was—
The Moon: the real Moon, not the dead stone that whirls blindly in Earth’s shadow but Hecate, Selene, Artemis: the pure and terrible One. She hung above us like a dream, like a doom waiting to fall and crush us—myself, Oliver, Hasel, Baby Joe—all of us frozen. All of us waiting to be chosen. Waiting to be destroyed.
But not me.
I started to run. Someone grabbed my arm—Hasel, though he held me without looking at me, his eyes still riveted on what was before us.
And then, what was before us spoke. “Come to me.”
It was only a whisper, but the night shivered with it, each dried blade of grass trembling as though a hot wind roared down from the sky.
“Come to me,” she said again, and every bone inside me strained toward her. But it was not to me she called.
As though he were walking through deep water, Hasel turned and stepped toward her. She opened her arms to him and he walked straight into them, heedless of the filth and gore that clung to her, the clots of blood thick and black as flies. Behind her the bull lay upon the earth like some fallen monument: black, its horns the color of bone.
She drew Hasel to her and he grabbed her furiously, moaning as her hands moved across his body. He was like a candle flame, small and pale, shining more brightly in the moment before it is extinguished. I could see the lunula, dangling from her right hand. Her fingers tightened and drew the bright crescent across his shoulder. Hasel cried out, his voice torn between longing and pain, and pulled away.
For an instant they stood apart. Hasel reached to touch his shirt, parted the slit-ted cloth and probed there. His eyes widened when he saw his fingers slick with blood.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey…”
Angelica cupped a hand beneath Hasel’s chin. Her lips parted as though to kiss him, but her free hand moved toward his breast, her fingers taut around a blade of light—
“No!”
Oliver darted between them, pushing Hasel aside. With a moan Hasel staggered away from Angelica, clutching his chest. The front of his shirt had been ripped from shoulder to hem, and where the cloth flapped open blood oozed from a long shallow gash across his sternum.
“Oh—God!—Sweet Jesus, I’m fucking bleeding—”
I moved to help him, but fell back as another voice rent the air.
“You said it was me!”
In front of Angelica, Oliver stood with hands clenched at his sides. His eyes were wide and maddened, his face contorted with rage.
“You wanted me!” he shouted. “You said it had to be me!”
Angelica stared at him, the lunula dangling loosely from her fingers. For the first time she seemed uneasy, and her gaze darted from Oliver to Hasel. Suddenly she nodded.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice. Quickly she draped the lunula back around her neck, awkwardly brushed a matted strand of hair from her eyes. Before she could move, Oliver grabbed her, his hands stark white against her bloodied arms. For a moment I thought she would pull away from him, but he pushed her roughly to the ground. She did not cry out or try to flee. Instead she stared up at him, her mouth a hard line curving slowly into defiance and a sort of grim joy. Oliver stared down at her, his hands fumbling at his belt. His trousers slid down his legs. Like a clumsy schoolboy he fell onto her, pulling her beneath him as her arms closed around his back.
“No.”
I covered my eyes but still I could hear them, their bodies thrashing against the dead stalks and Angelica’s low moaning whimper, Oliver making a deep grunting ah! ah! ah! as though he were being struck over and over again. In a way it was more horrible than all that had gone before, if only because it was so banal and so joyless, like listening to some machine echo the most precious remembered words of a lover long dead. But there was also something maddening about it: truly maddening. I was seized by a dreadful terror that if I stayed there I would lose my mind, as Angelica and Oliver seemed to have lost theirs.
So I turned to run—and froze.
On the rise behind me stood Balthazar Warnick and Francis Connelly. They might have been two stones set there as sentinels to guard the scene below. In the cold starlight they looked grey and stern: Francis’s mouth curled in disgust, Professor Warnick grim-eyed as he gazed down upon Oliver and Angelica moving in the dust.
As I stared, other things began to appear in the darkness to either side of them. Shapes tall and thin and white as birch trees, and others huge as menhirs, with great upswept wings; and still others the forms of ordinary men and women, seeming frail as porcelain beside those monstrous shadows. From horizon to horizon they stretched in an unbroken line, demons and angels and human men and women. Though they were mostly men. Men old and young and middle-aged, men of every race imaginable, their faces drawn and silent as Balthazar Warnick’s.
I began to shiver uncontrollably. There was no mistaking who they were. They were the Benandanti: Those Who Do Well, The Good Walkers. The chosen ones who for millennia had watched over mankind, benevolent sentries but also jailers, who meted out punishment and torment and death with as much care as they preserved a way of life. As the Furies were known as the Eumenides, The Kindly Ones, so the Benandanti saw themselves as benevolent; but to me they were dreadful even in their stillness.
I turned to look back down upon Oliver and Angelica; and now it seemed that they were not a man and a woman rutting in the dirt but two grasping dwarfish figures, struggling as they fought, the dead bull behind them. And then again they were not two people at all but mere shapes; and then not even that but formless things grappling beneath another, greater darkness. One white, the other black. Not the black that soothes and brings sleep but a chthonic darkness, a vast supplanting emptiness that was both maw and womb, whirling maelstorm and the storm’s calm fixed eye.
And as I watched a cry rent the air, a howl so anguished that I dropped to my knees. To hear such despair and horror given voice! I would be deafened, rather than hear such a sound again. As it died I cowered and prayed that whatever had cried out was lifeless now, or fled.
Behind me something moved. I cringed and flung one arm out to protect myself. But when I looked up I saw that it was only Baby Joe and Hasel, and behind them Balthazar and Francis, all staring at where Angelica and Oliver lay motionless in the grass.
“Ohh…”
I whirled and saw Oliver stumble to his feet, yanking at his trousers until they hitched up around his waist. He moved clumsily, the loose cuffs of his pants billowing around his calves. His fly was still open; his shirt was blotched with dirt and blood. A poisonous-looking crimson line tracked up the side of his leg. With his shambling gait and shaven head he looked like an old drunk. He kept putting his hands into his pockets and drawing them out again, like a nervous boy or pantomime beggar, and I could hear him mumbling—
“—bulbul, bulbulone! I will shally. Though shalt willy. You wouldnt should as youd remesmer. I hypnot. ‘Tis golden sickle’s hour. Holy moon priestess, we’d love our grappes of mistellose! Moths the matter? Pschttt! Tabarins comes. To fell out fairest…”
Suddenly he saw me staring at him. He raised his hand; for a moment I couldn’t see what he was doing, waving or mimicking a swimmer crawling to shore or showing me something, something bright and glittering between his fingers…
Then my gaze was drawn downward, to where Angelica lay at his feet. She was smiling, her eyes closed. Behind her the dead bull had shrunk from primitive icon to a grotesque and pathetic corpse, its legs stiffly crooked like broken planks, its eyes shuttered with dust. Angelica blinked, then slowly drew herself up, like a cat stretching. She opened her eyes and extended a languid arm to her consort.
“Oliver,” she said.
Oliver looked down at her. If before his face had been twisted with rage, now it was contorted into something almost impossible for me to fathom. Loathing, yes. But also love, and perhaps even admiration, but most of all, fear. One hand dropped to fumble with the buttons of his tr
ousers. The other tightened into a fist. Whatever shining thing he had grasped was gone. Then he was staring not at Angelica but at me, though not at me really but at something else. Very slowly the familiar crooked canine grin spread across his face. His head fell back, and he raised his hand. For a dizzying instant I thought he was going to strike Angelica. I caught a flash of something lucifer-bright as his hand swept down: a slender shining blade. It fell, not upon Angelica but upon his own groin.
“Oliver, no!” I shouted.
If the bull’s dying bellow had been thunderous, then Oliver’s scream was lightning: a blast of pure agony. I sprang forward and struck his hand, sending the knife skidding across the dirt. I heard Angelica screaming, Baby Joe and Hasel shouting. Oliver howled as I pushed him to the ground and tried to hold him still. Damp warmth spread across my jeans as I yelled for help. His legs thrashed, his eyes were open and staring blindly at the sky as he still gave forth that unending anguished howl.
“Enough.”
A low voice commanded me. I looked up and saw Balthazar and Francis. Francis grabbed me roughly, but Balthazar shouted and he let me go. Then Balthazar knelt beside me, tearing off his shirt and trying to staunch Oliver’s bleeding. With one hand he pushed me away. “Leave him to us now.”
Oliver’s howl cut off and he began to scream. I stared mutely at Professor Warnick. Exhaustion fogged his blue eyes, and a terrible, terrible weariness. “Go now,” he said.
As I stumbled to my feet someone grabbed me.
“Hija, come on—” It was Baby Joe, and Hasel at his side.
“No!—let me go, damn it, help him, we have to save him!—”
“Stop it, hija!”
“No—you don’t understand, they’ll kill him—let me go—”
I shouted and pulled free from Baby Joe. “I’m not leaving him!” I yelled, then looked around frantically. “Where is she, where’s—
“Angelica!”
As though echoing me Francis stood. “She’s gone!” His gaze fixed on the distant woods, and he started sprinting toward the trees when Balthazar shouted.
“Leave her, Francis!”
Francis glanced back, took another step as Balthazar commanded him.
“I said, leave her.”
Francis nodded and returned to Balthazar’s side. Professor Warnick looked up at Baby Joe and Hasel and me. “Get back to the house. Go, all of you!”
“Come on!” cried Hasel. He and Baby Joe began running up the long rise to the Orphic Lodge, dragging me between them. After a few steps I turned to look back.
In the darkened hollow they waited: the dead bull; the fallen boy; the silent guardian; the fool. Of Angelica I saw nothing. Balthazar Warnick crouched above Oliver, his hands moving quickly across the boy’s groin. Oliver’s face was so white that I feared he was dead. But then he moved his head slightly from side to side. He opened his eyes very wide and stared straight up into the sky, as though he saw something there, something glorious and terrible. Even from here I could see how angry Francis was: almost literally hopping with rage.
“But she’s got it!” His words sounded thin and clear, as though plucked from wires. “We can’t let her go, she’s—”
Warnick turned to him, his eyes burning. “It’s too late, Francis. Go to the lodge and call an ambulance. Get my car ready in case it doesn’t come right away.”
“But—”
Warnick’s voice shook as he shouted, “It’s been done, Francis. It’s too late now—”
He staggered to his feet. Oliver made a noise like gurgling laughter, his eyes still fixed on the horizon. Baby Joe and Hasel halted. Without speaking we all turned to where Balthazar Warnick pointed at the eastern sky.
There, above the unbroken line of leafless birch and sturdy conifers, above the tumbled stones and dying ferns, a pale light glimmered. As we watched, the frailest, most delicate arc of a crescent moon rose above the trees. A new moon where no moon should be; a new moon when the heavens should hold only its darkest quarter. Balthazar’s voice rang out, taut with wonder and dread.
“—She’s not sleeping anymore.”
CHAPTER 9
The Harrowing
BY THE TIME I reached our room, the entire lodge was in an uproar. Lights were flicking on everywhere, yawning students peered out their doors while the housekeeper Kirsten waited grimly by the front door like the old mansion’s Cerberus, glaring at anyone who ventured down the steps. Annie stood in the corridor, white-faced, her hair sticking up like a porcupine’s.
“Sweeney! What happened? Where’s Angelica?”
I shoved past her into the room and raced from one window to the next, yanking each open and leaning out, desperately scanning the night for what I needed to see: Angelica and Oliver laughing together as they walked back up to the lodge.
But instead there was only darkness, the sweeping shadows of me mountains and a few faint stars blinking wanly beneath the sickle moon. I pulled my head away from the open casement and stared at Annie. My breast ached with fear and hopeless longing, a palpable throbbing pain as acute as though I had been stabbed.
“She’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean I don’t know where she is.” I went from the window to Angelica’s bed and stared down at the neat worn coverlet, her bulging cosmetics bag, the little case that held her contact lens solution.
She won’t get far, Sheriff. She rode off without her eyeliner.
“You don’t know where she is?” Annie’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “Jesus! What happened—”
Through the open windows came a sudden high wailing. It grew louder and louder, perfect counterpoint to my anguished thoughts. Crimson light streaked the trees, strobing from red to black to red.
“No!” I ran into the hall, but Annie stopped me.
“Sweeney, what happened? You have to tell me, you can’t just take off like this—where is she?”
“I don’t know!” I yelled. “She took off! Something—something happened, something with her and Oliver—”
“Drugs? Was it drugs?”
“No, it wasn’t drugs, I wish it was drugs! Angelica split and Oliver, he tried to—he—”
“Goddamn it!” Annie tore across the room to her bed and started throwing clothes into a knapsack. “I knew it, I knew I should have gone with you.” The ambulance’s siren went dead, although its ghoulish light show continued. “Where’s my stuff? Did you do something with my other bag? Oh, god, why’d I stay here—”
Grief and fear exploded inside me. “Christ, Annie, what do you think you could have done? Some kind of, of witchcraft, what could you have done about that! These people are crazy; Angelica is crazy and you think you could have stopped her?”
“I would have stopped her! I would never have let her go—”
“There was nothing you could have done.”
We whirled to face the door. There stood Balthazar Warnick, one delicate hand resting upon the wooden jamb. On his forehead a vein throbbed, and he brushed distractedly at it, as though it were a fly. His sweater was covered with dirt and leaves and blood.
“You shouldn’t have interfered,” he added wearily; though I was unsure if he was talking to me, or Annie, or himself. “Katherine Cassidy, I want you to come with me.”
I stiffened. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Professor Warnick shook his head. “No one will hurt you. We’re sending you back to the city, that’s all.”
“Why can’t we stay here?” Annie’s voice cracked and she clutched her knapsack protectively to her chest. “Why can’t we leave in the morning?”
“You can leave in the morning with the others. Miss Cassidy has to leave now.”
“Why?” I started to cry. I hated myself but couldn’t help it. “What’s going on? Where’s Oliver—”
“They’re taking him to the hospital. I think he’s all right, just a bad cut although he did lose some blood.” He ran his hand across the f
ront of his sweater and winced. “Come on, Katherine. Pack your things.”
“No. I’m not going with you.”
“Do yourself a favor,” snapped a nasal voice, and Francis Connelly loomed behind Balthazar. He looked more shaken than I would have expected, but his eyes were cold. “Just shut up and come with us, okay?”
“Francis.” Professor Warnick turned to him angrily. “It’s under control. I told you to go to the hospital—”
“But it looks like—”
“I will meet you there,” Professor Warnick went on smoothly, but his voice had a dangerous edge. Francis stared at him, as though waiting for him to change his mind, finally nodded, and shot me a last disdainful glance. When he was gone Balthazar looked at me sorrowfully.
“Sweeney.” He’d never called me that before; his tone was so gentle that my silent tears gave way to sobs. “You have to come with me.”
“What are you doing?” Annie flung her arm protectively around my shoulders. In her too-long Snoopy T-shirt she looked like a kid fighting bedtime. “You can’t just take her—”
Professor Warnick sighed. “We’ve found drug paraphernalia in Miss Cassidy’s dorm room. Marijuana, some kind of mushrooms—”
“Hey! You didn’t have—” said Annie, but I cut her off.
“You were in my room? Who let you in my room—”
“I don’t believe it!” yelled Annie. “This is a setup, it’s a fucking—”
“I have a responsibility to the University,” Balthazar said coolly. “The penalty for drug possession is mandatory expulsion.”
“Expulsion!”
His voice rose impatiently. “Consider yourself fortunate, Miss Cassidy! We could call the police.”
“But—you didn’t have a warrant! Isn’t there some kind of appeal, can’t I—”
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