Crimes by Moonlight

Rusty, already her slave, was blown away. She was beautiful, magnetic. From her confidence and ease you’d think she’d been working on TV for years. For Christ’s sake, she even did the warm-up.

“Hello, America. Welcome to Sexploits, the program that lets it all hang out.”

“Ha!” The sound exploded from Rusty’s mouth. Even with the memory of a snarling black dog haunting him, he couldn’t stop laughing. Neither could anyone else in the control booth. Or the audience. It wasn’t that fu

The audience laughter was accompanied by deafening applause and foot stomping.

Hope’s beautiful face lit up. “Now, live and in New York, here’s the star of our show, Vic Lancaster.”

Vic appeared, blond and handsome. “Thanks, Hope, I trust you’ll tell the world that I’m an equal opportunity employer.” His punch line was an overstated leer.

He hadn’t let the audience down; they didn’t let him down. The laughter continued and built with each line of Vic’s very ordinary monologue.

HOPE knelt at Vic’s feet. After a moment, she thrust out her hands.

The crone placed the silver bowl and sickle in her open hands. Hope plunged the sickle into Vic’s groin, chanting, “Hecate, Goddess of Darkness, Goddess of the Moon, Goddess of Blood, may you live forever.”

Vic’s wound seemed to explode as a bloody torrent shot into the silver bowl. The blood flowed over the sides and spilled to the ground. The three-headed silver dog, Cerberus, lapped at the spill.

Suddenly, the three-headed silver dog was no longer the dog but the three-headed woman.

The three heads shimmered and became one. The new face was Hope’s, and it was smiling. Her smile was rapturous.

III

Hope opened her eyes; she had fallen asleep sitting up. The first thing she saw was the spiral design on the ceiling above her. It was comforting. She checked her watch. Almost three. Collecting her work, she pulled aside the blanket.

“Hi, sweets,” Rusty said sleepily.

“Hi,” she answered. “Pew. One of us stinks, and I think it’s me. I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep.” She yawned. “I’ve put in one tough day.”

But when the phone rang, Hope fell on the bed and grabbed it. “Hello.”

“Hope Brady?”

“Yes.”

“Harold Garment here.”

“Yes?” Harold Garment was Vic’s doctor. “What’s wrong?”

“It grieves me to tell you, Ms. Brady, Mr. Lancaster died early this morning.”

Her body went numb. She felt sorrow and elation. Poor Vic. But now the show was hers alone.

The physician seemed to be in shock. His speech was disjointed, his voice strident. “… incomprehensible. I couldn’t control the hemorrhaging. Spontaneous hemophilia. I don’t understand. I don’t…”

MONDAY night, an exquisitely gowned Hope hosted Sexploits. She was a triumph. The tabloids dubbed her “the Queen Slut of Smut.”

Hope had found a home. From e-mail and telephone reaction during and afterward, predictions were that the Slut’s audience share would break all records. The president, in a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union, was quoted as saying he thought Sexploits was a wonderful program.

RUSTY understood something very important.

Hope was protecting him. She was his shield. From here on, everything was going to be all right. He had to believe. That’s what this was all about. Hope had everything. And he had Hope, who was the servant of “Hecate, Goddess of Darkness. Hecate, Goddess of the Moon. Hecate, Goddess of Blood.”

Was Hecate satisfied? Sure, why not? Hope would serve Hecate. And he would serve Hope. If that’s the way it had to be, that’s the way it would be. He was a survivor. Yes, he was.

Rusty turned. He thought he saw Jess standing in a corner. He wished he could tell her. But that was stupid. Jess was gone.

One day she walked out of the office and never came back.

HOPE’S blue eyes had changed. One was icy green, the other shiny black. With awe and fear, Rusty approached her. She was speaking a foreign language to the chauffeur as he helped her into the long, silver gray Cadillac limousine.

Her green and black eyes gleamed as she stared at Rusty. She couldn’t abandon him now. Not after he’d come so far with her. He didn’t care what she was. It didn’t matter. As long as she didn’t leave him behind.

The back door of the Caddy opened. Hope’s lovely blonde head appeared. “Come on, Rusty, move it.”

She wasn’t going to leave him. Rusty jumped into the car. “Thanks,” he said, all out of breath. Desperate for her to know how devoted he would be, he grabbed her hands and kissed them. “We’ll be great together, I swear.”

She pulled her hands from his and lifted her right forefinger to her lips.

He sat back and adjusted his tie. This wasn’t going to be bad. In fact, this was going to be incredible.

HE saw the truck when they stopped for a red light. It was a glazier’s truck with slanted racks on the outside to carry glass.

Like the one he remembered, this truck also carried a mirror on the side facing them.

RUSTY saw Hope and a man in the mirror. They were both naked and bloody. It was an obscene tableau framed on one side by a black wolf, and on the other by a behemoth, three-headed silver dog.

He thought he recognized the man writhing in agony on the gory ground as the blood spouted from his body. The animals, eager to pounce on the dying man, lapped at the dark, wet ground.

Hope knelt beside him, licking the blood that dripped from her lips.

The man’s blood.

In the mirror Rusty saw the head of a snake-haired crone floating in midair.

Medusa’s ancient and jowled leather face glowed. She was smiling.

The man lifted his head, and Rusty saw the agonized face.

It was his.

The Awareness by Terrie Farley Moran

The awareness came on a Tuesday afternoon.

was editing an article for a genealogy newsletter when I felt a disturbance in my soul and knew with calm certainty that, before this sun cycle was complete, my banshee keening would join the howl of the wind or disturb the silence of an unruffled atmosphere. In this time-honored way I would a

Every American descended from Rory Dev O’Conor was in my charge. No death would go unrecognized. It had been ever so.

I boiled a cup of tea and waited, sitting on a footstool covered with a needlepoint so faded, its image of a rural Irish cottage was barely visible. My emerald eyes, a sure sign I’d inherited my father’s mortal blood, closed of their own accord. All who come from the land of the sidhe have eyes the gray-blue of the ocean slapping at the base of the Cliffs of Moher. Among the banshee, we of mixed heritage will always be recognized by our eyes.

I sat motionless until the time came.

I stood and touched my right fingertips to my left shoulder and my left fingertips to my right shoulder. Time and space became one and the same. I was floating thirty yards or so above a rooftop garden. An old woman, kneeling on a pillow, was weeding with careful concern. She would not require my voice this day. I hovered patiently and reveled in the fragrance of the clematis vines and the sight of a few late-blooming sunflowers, faces turned west to their namesake as it ambled its way across the sky.

The roof door opened. The shimmering glow of looming death preceded the hulking man who slumped through the door. His tousled hair was a darker red than my own and deeply flecked with gray. I felt his name invade my heart with great urgency. It would not be long. A hum started in the back of my throat, easing into a low moan. The keen rose, octave by octave, until my voice was one with the angels in heaven, and sadness covered the immediate earth. My tears sprinkled from the sky like bold drops from an unexpected sun shower.