Star Harbor Nights

Intentionally or not, the laughing woman struck a rather dramatic-looking pose on the edge of the rooftop for a moment, then she launched herself into the air, tumbling end over end... leaping or flying, Dani wasn't sure, but either way, the woman landed on her feet right in front of her.

Dani could see she was carrying a tall, rectangular bottle, with her thumb over the opening... it looked like it must be some kind of booze, but the label had been torn off.

Dani had no real way of knowing whether she was friend or foe, but her sudden and rather disconcerting appearance in a place where unkillable monster skeletons were happening wasn't really reassuring. Her sword went up into a ready position.

"Put aside your sword, silly child," she declared. "I'm here to fight... but not you."

"Who are you?" Dani asked.

"I am La Luna Nueva, the New Moon Woman... known as the Hound of Hecate and the huntress who sits at the right hand of darkness," the woman proclaimed. "Women love me. Men jack off to me. I am power and madness and night made flesh. I am what nightmares dream about when they wake up screaming. Any questions?"

"Are you naked under there?" Dani asked. It probably wasn't the most crucial piece of information that she could have requested at the moment, but she couldn't stop herself from it. Even with the blue light flooding the area, dark shadows seemed to coalesce around La Luna Nueva, preventing all but the most fleeting and tantalizing glimpses of her pale body.

Luna appeared to consider the question. She shot a questioning glance at Dani's pseudo-medieval outfit.

"Aren't you?" she replied.

"Okay..." Dani said. "Um, anyway, I really hope that you're here because you know how to beat these guys."

Dani was doing her best to keep the skeletons down with her force blasts, but they'd learned enough not to bunch up and she could only hit one at a time. The blasted bonemen were putting themselves together almost as fast as she could aim her ring at the next one.

"Well, they're easy enough to knock down," Luna said. She dropped down to her knees, reaching with her free hand between the bony legs of the nearest skeletons to grasp the long shadow where it fell across the grass. She yanked on it with her fingertips... there was something like a tearing noise, and the thing fell apart. "It's keeping them down that's the problem, ey?"

"I noticed," Dani said tersely, blasting one of the skeletons again. The one Luna had tripped up with the shadow trick was already mostly reconstituted. The rest were closing in.

"Though it does seem to piss them off a bit, and... I'll tell you this one for nothing," Luna said. She took a swig of whatever was in the bottle, flicked something Dani couldn't see in front of her face, and spit. A plume of flame shot out from her face, enveloping the creature she'd downed. "They... really... don't like being lighted on fire!"

The creature she'd sprayed with the flaming liquid lit up like a Christmas tree, burning away to embers in seconds.

"Nice... uh, what's in the bottle?"

"Gasoline," Luna said, wiping her mouth with what Dani thought was a piece of the toasted skeleton's shadow. "You want some? It does the trick nice, and makes you see all kind of crazy shit."

"Are you nuts?" Dani asked.

"Aren't you?" Luna repeated, laughing wildly. "You don't swallow it.. least, not unless they ask real nice."

"I've got my own," Dani said. She released her sword, and it puffed away in a cloud of luminous blue smoke. She didn't wait for it to dissipate but immediately "reached" for another item... a large candle on a blue metal holder.

"Nice, maybe we go a-wassailing next," Luna said. She followed that comment with a stream of what sounded to Dani like Spanish, but she couldn't decode the character of the remarks, much less their meaning.

"Watch," Dani said, brandishing the candle at one of the things. A massive fireball jumped from the wick, wreathing the skeleton in blue flame. It died screaming silently.

"Oh, baby, do it to me again," Luna cooed.

"Uh, it only works once per night," Dani said. "I'm not sure why."

"Ah, well, I've still got mine, right?" Luna said, swinging the bottle by the neck... which slipped from her fingers, shattering in the middle of the combatants. "Well, fuck me sideways with a rusted out muscle car," she said. She held up her other hand, which Dani now saw held a metal lighter with a small dancing flame. "I guess I don't need this any more, huh?" She opened her hand and let it drop to the ground... the flame still burning. Dani was forced to leap backwards as the dispersed gasoline went up, toasting a circular patch of the lot and catching the remaining three skeletons on fire.

The one who had been furthest from the center of the fiery explosion only caught one foot on fire, but that was enough... the red flames climbed up its leg and spread to the rest of its body in seconds.

"You're fucking nuts!" Dani cried at Luna. She summoned an icy blue crystal and put out the fire with a swirl of cold air.

"Yeah, we had this conversation already," Luna said. "And I don't do reruns... so, um... goodbye. Unless you want to help me hunt."

"Hunt?"

"Yes, hunt," Luna said. "Remember that speech about how I am the huntress who blah, blah, et cetera? Good times. Lately I've been hunting Bone Lords, and that's what these things seem to be."

"I thought the Bone Lords just painted their faces to look like skeletons," Dani said. 

"Well, a bunch of these things were waiting for me in a house where a group of Bone Lords died last night," Luna said. "So you do the math. Died fighting me, I should say, though I only killed one of them, and he seemed to be the only one not present and accounted for, so I don't think I can be blamed for this... especially since I had nothing to do with these ones, or the other two groups I toasted on my way here."

"How many do you suppose there are?" Dani asked "I mean, the Bone Lords are supposed to be like a huge gang, right?"

"They aren't supposed to be anything, but yeah, they were getting big," Luna said. "That's why I was after them... they're just little fish, in the grand scheme of things, but a lot of little fish can still fill up a pond, as they say... in places... with fish ponds... istan... ville... ington. Honestly, nobody anywhere says that. I'm not sure why I said it. Are you coming, or what?"

"I guess so... but what you said about being the 'Hound of Hecate'... did you mean that literally?"

"I don't piddle on the rug, or anything," Luna said.

"But... Hecate's Greek," Dani said.

"That's the story. Why?"

"Uh... don't take this the wrong way, but you don't look or sound very Greek."

"What? You think white Americans are the only ones who can go visit a random country and stumble upon a mysterious site of mystical power and find themselves wrapped up in a cosmic struggle involving ancient forces with no real connection to their own cultural heritage?" Luna asked.

"I guess not," Dani said. "So that's what happened to you?"

Luna scoffed so hard she snorted.

"No, not even close," she said. "But the point's still there. Anyway, what's your story, Cosplay Girl?"

"I... uh... found this ring," Dani said. "In... I guess you'd call it a second-hand store. In the mall."

"Sure, I know that place. You found it right between the magic hammer and the unbreakable shield, right next to the wrist dealies that shoot out webs and the monogrammed throwing blades," Luna said.

"I didn't say it was a great origin story."

"I hope you didn't pay full price for it," Luna said. "That stupid candle that only works once..."

"Well, it was only five bucks."

"I knew it! Great power always carries with it a terrible price."

"What... what did you say?" Dani asked, feeling as pale as Luna's face looked.

"Seriously, did you have to take out a loan, or did they give it to you on the installment plan... and why are you looking at me like I'm somebody else who is also, in a completely different way, crazy?"

"It's just, I was just thinking about that earlier tonight," Dani said. "About power having a price... because, well, I've kind of just been fucking around with this thing... and tonight, I was at this stupid club I've been hanging out in, and this guy came up to me, and just kissed me... out of nowhere... and then... well, he died."

"That's men... no staying power," Luna said. "That's why I don't even bother with them. Women are so much better in every way... but I think you know that."

Dani blushed.

"I like both," she said, a little quietly. "But that's not the point."

"Listen, chica... real power doesn't come with a price you have to pay; real power is a price that has to be paid," Luna said. "I'm speaking from experience here. I know what I'm talking about... well, actually, I don't at the moment, but I know that it's true."

"The old line about power and responsibility?" Dani said, a little doubtfully. "I've heard it before, but there's not a lot in the real world that backs it up."

"No? Look at it this way: this city is full of people who, if they knew that soul-sucking monster skeletons were running around, would think 'Oh, how awful. I wish somebody would do something about it.' They have no power, and so that's their only option. People like us... people like power... we can't wish for somebody to do something, because we are the somebody."

"Um, sidebar," Dani said. "Soul-sucking?"

"Oh, right," Luna said. "If you fight them again, don't let them touch you. But, anyway... we have the choice of fighting, and that choice constrains us. The other people have no choice but to hunker down until the storm passes, and so they're free."

"We're constrained by choice and they're free because they have no choice," Dani said. "That seems backwards."

"There's billions of people out there right now with no magical rings, just going about their lives any which way that they feel like it," Luna said. "They'll never have to make the decision to put it on or leave it off. You have that choice. Do you feel free?"

"No," Dani said. "How...?"

"I know things," Luna said, shrugging. "Sometimes. The moon tells me things."

"Does... does it tell you anything about my ring?"

"Nothing I can put into words," Luna said. "Sorry."

"Okay," Dani said. "How about the Bone Lords? What does it say about them?"

"It says that they are Saxons, and here is England."

"I don't get it... unless you mean that they're like, barbarian invaders," Dani said. "And we're supposed to repel them."

"I have yet to meet the person I cannot repel," Luna said.

"So, you do this kind of thing all the time?"

"I don't really do any one thing 'all the time'," Luna said. "But stuff like this... I am the Hound."

She shrugged dismissively

"And that means you have to take on an army of undead gang members?"

"Right now, they are not an army... they're a bunch of separate groups, disorganized and probably a little confused about what's happened to them," Luna said. "That makes them harder to find, but easier to fight. Give them a couple nights and they probably really will be an army... especially if their touch ultimately does what I think it does."

"Turns you into one of them?" Dani guessed. She'd played enough roleplaying games that this was her default assumption about undead life-draining attacks.

"I don't know why they would be giving themselves away by attacking people if they weren't gaining strength somehow from it," Luna said. "So, we hunt together?"

"I don't... yes," Dani said. "But, uh... do you ever..."

"What?"

"When you're up against stuff like this," Dani said. "Do you ever worry about dying?"

"Somebody tries to kill me at least once a week," Luna said, with another of her effortlessly noncommittal shrugs. "Somebody wicked smart and dead sexy... and she hasn't succeeded yet."