Diana Racine 02 - Goddess of the Moon

stood outside, waiting for permission.
    She managed a nod because words stuck in her throat. He stepped inside. “I don’t understand. I thought ― ”
    “I’m sorry I deceived you,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d understand.”
    She slumped into a chair, her mouth still open, and her hand pressed hard against her chest and rapidly beating heart . How could she have been so wrong? How could Edward Slater have fooled her so completely?
    “I don’t … understand,” she stammered. “How could anyone understand this?”
    “Give me a chance to explain,” he said.
    She shook her head slowly, rejecting in advance anything Slater said . “You explained once, and I believed you.” She massage d her temples , trying to finesse away the vice-tightening sensation. This isn’t happening. I must be in t he throes of another nightmare?
    “Lies. All lies,” she mumbled. S he faced him. “You had me going, Edward. What could you say now I’d believe? You drugged me, imprisoned me in a room somewhere on the planet, the object of a bizarre ritual to the devil, and I’m supposed to understand?”
    “It’s not like that.”
    “I suppose the cancer story was a lie, too, and that you have all the makings of a sex god to impregnate these young girls.”
    “No,” he said emphatically. “That part was true. Almost.”
    “ What is the truth ?” Diana asked, not shrinking from his apologetic gaze.
    “The cancer part but not the castration.”
    Diana got up and walked to the window. She wanted to scream but instead drew back the drapes and stared out into the abyss. A dark night in a dark world. No lights, no moon. Maybe she was on another planet. Mars, perhaps. Or Venus. Or a sick combination o f both.
    “Jesus. What a fool I am.”
    “Yes, Jesus, who turned his back on me and cast me into hell.”
    A slow bubbling concoction of shame and anger percolated inside. Lucier had been right all along . S he’d been hoodwinked by a sad story, by the intellectual brilliance of a madman. “Hell is what you made it, Edward.”
    “Let me ask you, Diana. Could you love a man like me? Could you look beyond the abortion between my legs? Cou ld you?”
    He waited. When she didn’t respond, he said, “As I thought.”
    She spun around to say something trite about love being in the eye of the beholder, but the words got lost in the sight before her. Edward Slater stood naked from the waist down, his pants draped at his feet. She gasped and backed against the window.
    “Shocking, isn’t it?” he said.
    Tears flooded in her eyes. She managed to stagger to the bed before passing out.
    * * * * *
    H is words echoed in her head from a far off place, becoming louder now, understandable. She had to rea djust to the time and place. When she did, she wanted to go back to th e never-never la nd from which she had awakened.
    “Again,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
    Diana heard his words and opened her eyes. Slater hovered over her.
    “That was cruel,” he said.
    He held a glass of water to her lips. She steadied his hand and sipped. It was the first time he let her touch him. He needn’t have worried about setting off a psychic connection. He pass ed nothing to her, n ot even a blink of a vision. Where Edward Slater was concerned, she had lost her abilities. In fact, what she saw in the light of reality was far worse than any image he could ha ve instilled through his touch.
    “What have you done with Ernie?” she asked.
    “He’s safe. For now.”
    She allowed herself a monumental sigh of relief. He’s alive . God had heard her prayer. “What do you mean, for now? Where is he?”
    “Being well taken care of. We bound him at first, but he’s not now.”
    Her high tumbled as reality sank in . She had jeopardized the life of the man she loved by being who she was― Diana, Goddess of the Moon. “Let him go. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be your goddamn goddess.”
    “Now see? That’s the kind of love I’m talking about. You’d do anything for him, even turn yourself into a love machine, wouldn’t you?”
    Diana stared into Slater’s steel-gray eyes that once had radiated kindness and warmth but now projected a cold arrogance. “Yes,” she said, never flinching from his gaze. “Even that. Just let him go. He doesn’t know where we are. If I’m right, he couldn’t find this place with all the resources of the police department and the FBI put together. Please, Edward.”
    “I can’t do that. He