The Hunt for Lilywhite (part six)

In which Lilywhite collects a souvenir.

Jul 04, 2025

Previously in The Bone Angel series 2, The Hunt for Lilywhite:

Maddalena gets a line on an old acquaintance who might help the Hunter’s mission, and Lilywhite revs up his followers for big things ahead. Catch up on past episodes of Series 1 and Series 2 here.

Earlier tonight, Lilywhite had slipped into the house, triumphantly clutching his memento in a plastic freezer bag. His white suit and white loafers were spattered with blood, wet sand crunched between his teeth, and he breathed hard with the wonder of it all.

Out in the empty desert south of the City, the pretty young woman he’d picked up at the bus station had started to get nervous, asking again and again where he was taking her. She started screaming when he wouldn’t say, so he pulled the car off the road and smacked her till she was still.

Then he’d driven on through the dark, looking for the place the visions told him of. A place of black volcanic rock where energy runs like fire and those who know how can walk between the worlds. Down in the canyon where giant boulders teetered like acrobats on top of each other, he glimpsed that pile of stones, gleaming like water behind a faint shimmering Veil that rippled gently against the summer stars.

Gathering the incantation in his mind, he frogmarched the woman toward that dancing veil of light. Human blood would send those words flying, he’d been told, riding the energies of the Moon Road to a crack in that unbreachable portal that imprisoned the old gods of Earth.

Breathlessly chanting the words he’d been given, calling out the syllables that twisted his tongue and burned his throat, Lilywhite slipped the little sharp knife from his pocket.

“Blood and bone I bring you!” he shouted, drawing the knife across the woman’s smooth pale throat. “Open the way!” And as blood began to spurt, he shoved her through that dancing silver veil.

She shrieked and shrieked again, vanishing into the glittering darkness beyond the veil as the chant flew on a river of blood toward the prison of the Old Ones.

Cold washed over him, grim and bitter like the cold at the end of the world, and wetness spattered his face and his clothes. The Veil between the worlds fluttered like curtains in a light breeze, then faded, leaving only a faint quivering of air above a mound of red-streaked black rocks.

The woman’s hand, neatly severed, rested against his foot.

Wiping his face, Lilywhite had picked up the hand and stumbled rubberkneed back to his car.

Now, he scrapes the cup for the last bit of peanut butter and tuna, watching his acolytes gather in cyberspace: Whitepower from upper New York, Slayer from somewhere in Texas, Thor’s Hammer from right here in the City, Diesel from Stuttgart, and many others. They’re all offering thumbs up and grinning emojis and messages like “yes brother, it’s time!”

With a final reminder to tune in to his podcast in the morning, Lilywhite shuts down the computer and turns off the light. There’s got to be a message in his dreams tonight.

He can’t wait.

While Lilywhite basks in the glow of his adventure with the Old Gods, the Hunter hunches over an assortment of gadgets spread out on the dining room table of the parish house.

It’s his usual gear for cross-world work: a thin black laptop, a bag of bugs and a collection of the pearly messenger bubbles that can move back and forth across the Betwixt and Between. There’s also an array of small guns, a knife or two and a little square box attached to a thin silver antenna.

He’s spent the last three weeks trying to get this thing to work properly. It’s supposed to sniff out traces of Otherside energy anywhere in the city and geolocate them. But tech gets iffy when it has to cross the Betwixt and Between, often failing to align with whatever energy sources prevail in various locations.

And Earthside devices just aren’t made to pick up the higher frequencies of magical systems or the signals of the Otherside’s organic cell towers. That means it’s near impossible to talk in real time to the Directorate.

He could send a bubble of course, but they take time. They can also be intercepted, and he’s getting a little paranoid. The Directorate sent a bubble to warn him Marcus — well, an assassin anyway — was coming last night. How did they know? What did they know? And who convinced Marcus to take on that job?

Don’t think about Marcus.

The Hunter flicks the antenna irritably and the box springs to fitful life, its readouts glitching in and out until he whacks the side. For the first time, they stabilize, showing a bright blue hotspot of activity somewhere close. As the Hunter taps the screen for the coordinates, it goes black.

Cursing wildly in many languages, the Hunter shakes the tracker, but the screen remains sullenly dark. That was Lilywhite, had to be. The tracker isn’t calibrated to sense local magics, and his briefing had warned that the podcaster might be protected by some powerful cloaking glamour.

He drops the tracker on the table, resisting the urge to fling it against the wall. That means a damaged equipment report to file when — if — he gets home.

His phone, Father Teodoro’s Earthside one, vibrates in his cassock pocket. Frowning, he fishes it out. Which of the Cathedral’s parishioners needs a priestly word this time of night?

But it’s Maddalena. “Hunter, Father — I think I’ve found somebody who can help us!” She tells him breathlessly.

Us? He lets that one slide. She’s done what he hoped she would. “Good job. Text me the info.”

“I’m going to see him now.”

“No you’re not —” the Hunter begins.

“I’ll let you know what I find out.” The call clicks off.

In the sudden silence, the wind rises, sending a tree branch tapping against the window. The Hunter jumps, reaching for his pistol. Pressed against the windowpane is a single black feather, just like the one summoning him to an audience on Spring Street not so long ago.

Well, shit. What does Mama Silva want now?

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Behind the Scenes:

Myths and legends tell us that the realms of the fae can be reached through a variety of geographical features such as lakes, rivers, caves and mounds. Human installations on magical sites can be portals too, such as wells, standing stones, carvings and statues.

But what serves as a place of power in the middle of the desert? The inspiration for the Moon Road portal near Soledad City comes from a natural feature near the Arizona-New Mexico border, called Texas Canyon.

It’s a place of many strange rock formations, including some in which large boulders balance delicately atop even larger ones, and giant volcanic outcroppings point straight up to the sky. (The image at the top of this episode was built on a photograph of Texas Canyon stones. )

A bit of housekeeping on Black Moon Journal: The Bone Angel series is getting its own tag to help readers keep track of the story, and I’m adding a link to the Episode Guide at the top of each new installment.

Up next: Mama Silva demands an accounting, Maddalena takes a risk, and the Hunter gets help from an unexpected source. Plus, a new tale of the Goblin Games.

Till next time —