Waking the Moon (70 page)

I thought I would go mad. Afraid to leave my office, because I might miss Dylan if he returned. Afraid to stay, because every minute that passed meant he was going farther and farther away, he was almost gone now, I was losing him, he was gone …

“Oh,
god,”
I cried, and laid my head on my desk. I stared at my watch, the numbers blurring: 3:45, 3:54, 3:57 …

Four o’clock.

No Dylan.

Four-fourteen; four-thirty; four thirty-five. I called Annie.

“He’s not here,” she said. She sounded as though she had been crying. “Sweeney. I think you better come home.”

I have never felt anything like the air that afternoon: so moist and suffocating it was like being covered with hot wet plaster. The sky was the baleful color of lichen or tamarack. But dark as it was, the light stung my eyes, as though there was some subtle toxin in the haze, something that sapped the spirit and gave everything the livid bruised glow of a corpse. My nostrils burned; the air smelled of harsh smoke and something more organic, algae or decaying wood. I thought of the legendary swamp the city was said to have been built on—the buried River Tiber, somewhere below us the bones of people whose cemeteries had been covered over by cement and limestone and marble.

There were hardly any cars on the street. I paced nervously back and forth, looking for a cab, and had already started walking when one finally appeared.

“I’m going to Ninth Street, up by Eastern Market,” I said, and flung myself into the seat.

“You live in Northeast?” the driver asked. She was a small grey-haired woman with a ring in her nose. “You know there’s no power there, right?”

I shook my head. “No, I hadn’t heard—”

She nodded. “No power. They had to shut down the Library of Congress and the Post Office. Some people got stuck in an elevator there, a guy had a heart attack. I guess the heat. Yeah, power’s out all across Northeast. Metro’s down, everything’s off in Brookland, parts of Southeast, over in Maryland …”

The cab had no a/c, but I rolled up my window anyway. I couldn’t stand to breathe that soupy air. I couldn’t stand to think about what the driver was telling me; I couldn’t stand anything.

“Yeah,” the driver went on, wiping her face with a bandanna. “Me, I’m going home now, you’re my last fare. They’re talking about riots, you know? Power goes down, everybody takes to the street, you’re looking at some trouble, sister. This whole place up in flames before you know it. You got a boyfriend?”

I tried to say something, but all that came out was a groan.

‘“Cause you know, us ladies probably shouldn’t be out alone if something like that comes down. All this heat, makes people crazy. That’s why I’m going home now. You’re my last fare …”

There were no people on the sidewalks. No one sitting on the stoops, no one hanging out on street corners. From far away I heard a siren, but I didn’t see any police cars. I didn’t see anyone. My chest felt heavy, crushed between my fear for Dylan and this new horror: was it really as simple as this? A few weeks of terrible weather, a gathering storm; then pull the plug on the air-conditioning and subway, and the city goes up in flames?

“Yeah, I was listening to WMAL, they got an emergency generator or something I guess. They said everybody should just
stay indoors.
Like if you got no air-conditioning and it’s a hundred degrees out, you want to
stay indoors
…”

The woman gave a last harsh laugh and fell silent.

When we reached Dr. Dvorkin’s house I shoved a handful of dollar bills into the driver’s hand and stumbled from the cab. I shoved open the ramshackle door that led through the breezeway, my heart beating so hard it was as if it didn’t belong to me anymore, it was like something trying to get
in.
Then I was running across the patio, and then I was at the carriage house.

Annie met me at the door. Her face was beet red and wet, from crying or from the heat I couldn’t tell. “Sweeney. I tried to call but you’d already left your office …”

“Dylan?” I shouted, pushing her aside.
“Dylan
—”

Sitting on the couch, atop Annie’s crumpled sheets and pillows, were two men. They wore faded khakis and their shirtsleeves were rolled, their heads bowed so at first I didn’t recognize them.

Then the taller of the two looked up and saw me.

“Katherine,” he said, starting to his feet. The man beside him looked up hesitantly; then he stood as well.

“This guy said he was your landlord,” Annie said, cocking her thumb at Robert Dvorkin.

“He is,” I said numbly, but I hardly glanced at him. My eyes were fixed on Balthazar Warnick.

“Sweeney,” he said. “The time has come that we must ask for your help.”

“Help?” I shook my head, dumfounded. “You want
my
help? Where’s Dylan? What are you
doing
here?” My voice rose as my confusion boiled into anger. “What the hell is going on?”

“Please, Katherine.” Dr. Dvorkin’s tone was calm but edgy. “You must understand. We need you—”

I stared at him: so thin and worn-looking in his faded clothes, his eyes bright and desperate.

“No. Robert—you’re not …”

But of course he was. This wasn’t the Robert I had known and worked with all those years, not the neighbor and friend I had sat with in the hidden garden, drinking wine and talking of nothing at all. This was someone else entirely. This was one of the
Benandanti.

“You’re—you’re one of them.”

He nodded. “Yes. But surely you knew?”

“I—I guess I did,” I said slowly. “I guess maybe I just didn’t want to.” I turned from him to Balthazar Warnick. “Why are you here? Where’s Dylan?”

My hands bunched into fists; I started to move closer to them but Annie stopped me. “If you’ve hurt him—”

“We have not hurt him,” said Balthazar Warnick quietly. “Angelica has taken her son.”

“Why?” blurted Annie.

Balthazar’s eyes remained fixed on me. “Sweeney. She will kill him—”

“No!”

“Yes. She is not the Angelica you knew, Sweeney. She hasn’t been, for—for a long time.”

For the first time since I arrived he took notice of Annie. “Tell her, Annie,” he urged. “You saw—you know what happened to the others—”

Annie stared at him in disbelief. “You knew? All along, you knew what she was doing—and you didn’t stop her? You let her kill Baby Joe, and Hasel—you almost let her kill me!” She looked as though she were about to grab Balthazar by the throat. “Why didn’t you
stop
her—”

Balthazar stood his ground. “We couldn’t—”

I broke in furiously. “You
couldn’t? Why
couldn’t you?
Why?
Where’s your
Benandanti
magic now? Why don’t you just stick Angelica through another door, Balthazar? Why don’t you just go after her with a fucking
gun?”

I lurched forward and grabbed Balthazar by the collar, no longer caring what happened to me. “What, all of a sudden you need my help? All of a sudden you need my
permission
to kill someone? You didn’t bother asking when you killed Oliver—”

“We didn’t kill Oliver!” Balthazar cried. “He—”

“You drove him to it! You had him locked up in that place, you knew he wasn’t strong enough, you
knew
it! I thought you were supposed to help him, I thought you all had some special
plan
for him—”

“We had no plan, Katherine,” Robert Dvorkin said softly. “All we ever knew of Oliver and Angelica was that they were Chosen. For some reason, they were Chosen. It’s only now that we realize that
Dylan
must have been the reason—”

I shook my head. “Dylan?”

“He
must
be—else why would Angelica and Oliver have conceived him? He is the last great sacrifice Angelica must make, in order for her epiphany to be complete. Then she will truly be Othiym—”

“Then it will be as before,” whispered Balthazar. “Have you forgotten, Sweeney?”

I flinched as Annie grabbed my arm. “What’s he talking about, Sweeney?”

“Have you forgotten?” Balthazar took a step back and flung his hands upward. “Then remember
now
!”

Before us the room was rent apart. Where Balthazar and Robert had stood, there was utter darkness. From the wasteland came a freezing wind, its roar so deafening that I could not hear Annie’s screams, only see her face contorted into mute horror. My sweat-soaked clothes grew stiff with rime as I grabbed her and pulled her to me, then crouched so as not to be borne into the abyss.

A terrible voice rang out. Balthazar’s voice.

“Behold Her now!”

The darkness was sucked away, whirling into some vast fiery vortex whose center was an immense eye. An eye that was open yet at the same time without sensibility, like that of a stone idol. As the darkness coiled into that huge orb I could see that it was but part of a face, a face so horribly and inconceivably vast that I fell to my knees in awe and terror.

“Behold Othiym!”

It was Her—the same monstrous figure I had seen that night with Angelica so long ago. The sleeping goddess, the Woman in the Moon: Othiym Lunarsa. She wore upon her breast the lunula, but it was no longer a slender crescent of silver but the moon, the
real
moon. She was more beautiful and terrible than I could ever have imagined, her mouth parted like a dreaming child’s—but it was Angelica’s mouth, just as those dreaming eyes were Angelica’s eyes, as the hair that was the very fabric of the night country was Angelica’s hair …

With a shout of horror I drew my arm up over my face. Because that deathly wind, the wind that sucked all sound and color and life into the void—that wind was
her breath.
All life was being drawn into her, into the shining crescent that lay upon her white skin. It was so brilliant that I could not bear to look upon it, so bright that it would surely set aflame all who gazed upon it, all who dared to walk beneath it—

“Sweeney!”

Like a gong Balthazar’s voice echoed across the wasteland. I lifted my head. As suddenly as it had appeared the night country was gone. I was kneeling on the slate floor of the carriage house, shuddering with cold. Beside me Annie moaned, then with a cry started to her feet.

“Sweeney—he’s going to kill us!” She grabbed me, her eyes wild. “Come
on
—”

Before us stood Balthazar and Robert Dvorkin. Their hands hung limply at their sides and their eyes were wasted-looking. As I looked at them, Balthazar raised one hand and held it out to me.

“It is my fault,” he said, his voice so low I could scarcely hear him. “I thought Angelica was too young when the lunula came to her. I thought she could never be anything more than what Magda was—smart, ambitious, cunning. I thought—I thought she was just a girl. Just a woman …

“Even after that night at the Orphic Lodge—I never dreamed how powerful she might become. I never dreamed she would turn so completely from her father, from all of us—”

He looked at Annie. “From all of you,” he said. “From her friends. And from her own son.”

He fell silent. I thought I could hear my heart beating inside me, and in the stillness Annie’s heart as well, and Balthazar’s, and Robert’s. I looked away from Balthazar and stared at the floor, trying to find some pattern there in the slate tile. Trying to find an answer; something to believe in.

“Sweeney.” I raised my head and Balthazar was there, his hand still held out to me. “You are our last hope.”

“You are Dylan’s only hope,” murmured Robert.

Annie yanked my wrist. “No, Sweeney, this is
insane
—”

With an effort I shook her from me. “No,” I whispered. “Wait—”

The room was utterly still, save for the exhausted buzzing of a fly against the window. I could feel their eyes upon me—Balthazar’s brilliant yet restrained gaze; Annie’s fury and confusion; Dr. Dvorkin’s pleading. I took a deep breath. Then I took Balthazar’s hand.

“I will help you,” I said in a low voice. “Not because I think you’re any better than Angelica. I don’t. You murdered Magda Kurtz and Oliver Crawford and god knows how many others. You stood by and did nothing while Angelica slaughtered my friends. You let her take Dylan, and—”

My voice began to shake. “—and you tossed
me
aside, like I was
nothing
! Like I had no place in your beautiful perfect world, your perfect Divine! Because I wasn’t one of your golden children, one of your goddamn scholars. One of your fucking
chosen ones.”

I tried to yank away from Balthazar, but he tightened his grip with one hand.

“No,” he said. “You’re wrong. All these years, here—”

He indicated the walls and ceiling of the carriage house, the garden outside. “All this time, Sweeney: you have been under our protection.”

A chill ran through me. “No—”

“Yes.” Beside him Robert Dvorkin nodded. “We have been taking care of you, Sweeney—”

“No—”

“Watching out for you. Protecting you …”

The blood was thrumming in my ears but I could only shake my head, saying
no, no, no
as he went on.

“All those years ago at the Divine, Sweeney—we were wrong. Or, at least, we were only partly right. We knew that Angelica and Oliver were part of the equation; later, we knew that Othiym was as well.

“But we did
not
understand that there might be someone who would love Angelica and Oliver both. Someone who would not just come between them, but who might, somehow, serve to bring them together again.”

I groaned.
“No
…”

“And Dylan—We did not know that
he
was going to be born, that
he
would grow, perhaps, to become the real, the true Chosen One—

“We did not foresee that, Sweeney. And we did not foresee
you.”

Silence. My legs buckled, but Balthazar pulled me to him, his hands surprisingly strong.

“Do you understand now?” he asked, his voice desperate. “Do you see, Sweeney? The pattern was there all along! It wasn’t just Angelica and Oliver—it was
you
and Angelica and Oliver—
you
were there, all along—”

“But what can I do?” I cried. I could feel Annie next to me, her cold hands tight on one arm, Balthazar’s on the other.