Star Harbor Nights

"How do you know where we're going?" Dani asked, following La Luna Nueva as the mad, shadow-clad woman bounded down the darkened night streets of Star Harbor. Dani had never had much occasion to run in her transformed, blue-glowing state. She was pleased to find she could match Luna's relentless pace effortlessly, and even converse while doing so.

"Like I told you, I'm Hecate's hunting hound," Luna said. "I can smell out magical activity... if I know what to sniff for. Those losers caught me by surprise the first time, but now that I got a good whiff of them I could find their kind anywhere in the city. That's how I found you."

"So, could you... sense me?" Dani asked. "If we got separated?"

"Your ring," Luna said. "Or you, when you're transformed by it. I could, yeah. In fact, if this hadn't gone down, I probably would have been sent after you, at least to check you out a bit."

"What do you mean?"

"Come on," Luna said. "Priceless magical artifact winds up in the hands of some kid... somebody'd have to make sure you weren't like some repressed weirdo loner who'd end up going Columbine on a Biblical scale... or that you weren't just being manipulated by the forces of darkness to begin with. That kind of crap usually ends up on my desk. Or it would, if I had a desk. Basically, when somebody's abusing magic in a big enough way, I show up and abuse them back."

"Aren't you the forces of darkness?" Dani asked.

"Hecate is a force that is dark," Luna said. "There's a difference."

"What's she like?" Dani asked. "Hecate, I mean. I've never met a goddess."

"Neither have I," Luna said. "I'm not even sure I believe in gods... but something's sure as hell been yanking me around my whole life, and I've seen and killed stranger things than a primordial goddess of magic in my time, so... why not?"

Dani stopped short, literally and figuratively. Luna, sensing the change, stopped and turned on her heels, regarding Dani curiously.

"Um, on that subject," Dani began uncertainly. "The subject of killing... did you hear me mention that I killed a guy?"

"Yeah, big deal," Luna said. "I've killed a hundred."

"But isn't that the sort of thing you're talking about?" Dani said. "Abusing magic?"

"First, I'm not the police, and I'm not like superlady, here-I-come-to-save-the-day, okay?" Luna said. "I don't care who kills who with what. There're six billion people in this world, and any one of them could get a knife or a gun and just up and kill anybody else, for any reason... or no reason. If they happen to do it with magic, what's the difference? It's not my job to worry about that. Second, you said he kissed you and he died. I didn't hear you say that you did anything, so don't go taking all the credit."

"I'm not taking credit!" Dani said. "It just seems like... if I was responsible for somebody's death... there should be some consequences."

"You want to go tell the police that you killed a man with your lips of death?"

"No, I mean... from the universe," Dani said. "Forces of balance. Karma. Whatever. Isn't that stuff real?"

"In this world you live in, nobody ever gets away with murder, and everybody with riches and power did enough good things to deserve them?"

"No," Dani said. "But..."

"But nothing," Luna said. "'Balance' is a lie that people tell themselves about the universe in order to feel better. It makes them feel better when they do good that goes unrecognized... to think that they'll be rewarded in time... or when they see somebody in need but don't do anything, they tell themselves that the person must deserve it somehow."

"So you get your powers from a goddess, but you don't think anybody's out there keeping score, making sure things are fair?" Dani asked.

"Does life look fair to you?" Luna said. "Look, I know why you want to believe all this. People need to believe that life makes sense. A bunch of random stuff happens and your brain wants to put it together, 'Oh, I smiled at the homeless person and then I won a free small fry with lunch!' You don't want to believe that it's random, and the human brain is just so into patterns that it sees them even when there is none. I've seen the real pattern... and I tell you, it's pure shit. You're better off not knowing."

"You said you don't know if you believe in gods or not," Dani said. "So... you don't know this stuff for sure? I mean, you could be wrong about it?"

"I know everything," Luna said. "Sometimes. Usually not all at once. But... I don't know this. You're right. I feel it."

"Don't you think you're being pessimistic, though?" Dani asked. "I mean, I'm so not a true believer of anything in particular... I just think it makes more sense to believe that somebody or something has a plan for the world."

Dani had been surprised to find herself disagreeing with Luna, at least out loud. The other woman was obviously far more knowledgeable about the supernatural than Dani, whose previous experience with such was limited to fantasy roleplaying and a good deal of wishful thinking. Once they'd got to talking, though, Dani felt her confidence growing. She was herself touched by the supernatural now, and Luna had admitted that she speaking her feelings, not facts. That kind of put them on equal footing, in a way, Dani thought.

The fierce look on Luna's face as she spat out her reply squashed that idea.

"You take a good look at the world lately, huh?" she asked. "You see the sort of things going on in it? When I look at just the shit that goes on in my own life, I feel a lot better thinking that nobody out there chose to do it to me, that nothing that thinks of itself all-knowing and all-loving took a good hard look at my life and said, 'You know, I think we could make things more interesting for her.' Anybody who believes some all-powerful god actually got itself fucked in the head badly enough to think the way it runs the world right now is for the best is the real pessimist."

"I'm sorry," Dani said. "It's just... I guess I don't spend much time thinking about this stuff. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what things could be real... and what I wish was real... but it was mostly in the sense of how cool it would be, to, you know, be chosen by a goddess to be her champion or something. I used to imagine that kind of stuff all the time, but I guess I didn't really think it through."

"I guess not," Luna said. "Do you know what the word 'touched' means, as in, 'in the head?' It means your mind has made direct contact with the divine... and it also means crazy. There are good reasons that the two concepts are related."

"I can believe that," Dani said. "We can talk about something else... um... are we getting close to the next group of bone guys?"

"I don't know," Luna said. "You got me talking... and... now there's something else. Some other big mystical presence rising up, out there somewhere. It's interfering."

"What is it?" Dani asked.

"Nothing," she said.

"You don't know?"

"It feels like nothing," Luna said, firmly.

"So that means you don't have to check it out?"

"I do," Luna said. "Nothing should feel like nothing. You could probably go home if you want to."

"What, why?" Dani asked. "Is it because of the stuff I said?"

"No, it's just... skeletons are one thing," Luna said. "I mean, you can push them around with your blue strobe things, and you know their weakness now... but this, Dani, this thing could be really bad. I have to go and check it out. I have no choice. You do."

"You said having power meant I had no choice," Dani reminded her.

"It means you have less choice," Luna said. "I can't put down my burden... but your ring comes off. Go home and take it off. For one night, be normal. Put it back on tomorrow. Okay?"

"No," Dani said firmly, making up her mind. "I wouldn't have known how to beat those Bone Lords without you. You helped me, so I help you. Responsibility, right?"

"Dani, you don't know what that word means," Luna said. "But I'm being told that if you come with me tonight, you will probably learn."

"Maybe I want to," Dani said. She meant to sound resolute; in her own head, she sounded petulant.

"Dani, please," Luna said. "I don't usually ask people for things. I don't ever beg. If I did, would you go home?"

"What is it?" Dani asked. "I'm not afraid, whatever it is."

Luna closed her eyes and muttered something Dani couldn't understand. It sounded like a prayer and a curse.

"How do you know I'm not supposed to come along?" Dani asked her. "Maybe we were fated to meet."

"That's the thing... I do know that," Luna said. "I'm supposed to bring you with me. I know that. I can't change that. You don't have to come, though, and if you just went home, I wouldn't be responsible."

"You're not responsible now," Dani said. "Anyway, you asked me to help you hunt. You didn't say what. So what are we waiting for?"

"Nothing," Luna said, shaking her head. "Okay, but I..."

She trailed off, saying nothing. Instead, she set off across the street, in a different direction than they had been heading. She moved at a determined pace, though slower than she had been when they had been in pursuit of the skeletal Bone Lords.

Moving in silence, the journey probably seemed longer than it actually was. Dani realized they were heading south, into what she had always been told were "bad neighborhoods"... older parts of town with heavy immigrant populations. They even went right past the borders of Twistville, shortly before Luna eventually brought them to a halt. She pointed across the way, at an old brick building with a distinctive rosette window and a steepled roof capped with a cross.

"A church?" Dani asked. "That's the big mystical threat?"

"Inside," Luna said simply.

They crossed the street and hopped the iron fence, both of them clearing it easily, though it was taller than either one of them. At the entrance, which they found slightly ajar, Luna hesitated.

"You first," she said. "I... have issues."

"Is this like a vampire thing?"

"I'm not a vampire," Luna said sharply.

"I didn't mean that you were," Dani said.

"It's a philosophical thing," Luna said. "I go where I have to go. It'll just take me a moment... it'll be easier for me if you actually open the door."

"Alright," Dani said, pushing it inward. The heavy door was perfectly balanced, and swung easily. The inside of the church seemed brighter than Dani would have expected... dim, of course, but brighter than the outside. The light was strange, too. It had a distinctly orangish cast to it. She realized it was mostly coming from further in, beyond the small antechamber and into the church proper.

Drawn by the glow, she went in without thinking. Part of her was conscious of Luna's footsteps behind her. She followed a carpeted path through a pair of propped-open doors and into the center aisle--the nave, it was called, though she wasn't sure where she'd read that--of the church.

All around her, reddish-orange symbols that glowed and writhed like fire shed the harsh, unearthly light.

Dani stared at the letters, which repeated themselves endlessly around the walls. She had no idea what they meant, or even if they were intelligible words of any sort, but somehow she felt as though they were repeating themselves in her head, as well.

It occurred to her once again that Luna knew more about mystical stuff than Dani herself did.

"These symbols... what do they mean?" Dani asked.

Beside her, Luna went very quiet. It wasn't just that she didn't reply... she had gone so still that it was a palpable presence inside the church, as much as the glow was. The loud, brash, and very likely completely crazy woman had gone so quiet that she was actually radiating silence. Dani turned, a little bit frightened... and even more so when she saw that the New Moon Woman had managed to find an even paler shade to turn.

Dani didn't feel any better when, very quietly, she said, "They mean the end of the world."