Page 47 of The Hunting Moon
CHAPTER26
Jay spots the mist at the same moment as Winnie. His head shakes—an incredulous movement while he glances uselessly at his watch. Whatever hour is shown there doesn’t matter. The mist is the final arbiter of their actions, and the mist is here.
Now.
Jay seems to come to the same conclusion, since he suddenly twists away and moves fast as an arrow for the nearest granite wall. Winnie staggers after him, the mist expanding around her. It is balmy, a welcoming embrace collecting in this low pocket like a steam room.Let me clean you, let me warm you, let me wash away all your cares.
She flings herself at the wall where Jay now stretches down to help her out. His grip is strong. “We… can’t stay still,” he grunts as Winnie digs her feet into the granite. “We have to move.”
You think?Winnie wants to snap at him. Instead, she clambers onto higher ground and searches for their best escape. Mist tentacles over her arms toward her face.Let me clean you, let me taste you—
Jay scoops beneath Winnie’s arms and hauls her to her feet. “Come on, Winnie. Follow me.”
Winnie tries to obey, but where Jay immediately shoots off, his uncanny hunter senses taking hold, she feels only panic. They weren’t supposed to be here when the nightmares rose. They were supposed to be safely away and far from any monsters or Whisperers or death.
Pure Heart,her dream had illogically called it.Trust the Pure Heart.She imagines she can hear the Whisperer now, coming for her in the trees. That unnatural rustling like a record player scratching backward on the wrong side of vinyl. Her own hunter instincts aren’t rising—the ones that she and Jay have honed and honed and honed within these trees.
Was it fun jumping off the falls?
Aroo-aroo!
Wolf Girl, that footage looked so cool.
“Winnie.” Jay’s arms come around her. “We have to keep moving.”
Winnie knows this is true. The Compendium is very clear about this, and its words are already scrolling in her brain.Since there is no predicting the location of a nightmare’s arrival, the hunter must keep moving. Otherwise, one could apparate exactly where the hunter stands.
The mist is all the way to Winnie’s waist now, and it’s quickly getting hotter. A pot to boil lobsters alive. Soon air will come squealing out of her carapace and she’ll wonder why the chef didn’t just kill her and be done with it. After all, the Whisperer is on its way and no one survives its supernova embrace.
That’s what the blood meant, right? That granite pit was a feeding ground.
“Come on.” Jay’s arms tighten around Winnie’s shoulders. “Winnie,move.” He shoves her into a walk, and as much as her feet desperately want to stay rooted in place… they walk.
And the walking is good. Mist cloys and claws. It encases her and steals her sight, sears her exposed hands and face. Fire, flames, magma that used to roil within but now come from without.
Though initially thick and hot, the mist quickly fades into a more typical post-rain fog.
“Keep breathing,” Jay whispers to her. “Keep moving.”
“Yes,” Winnie replies, though the word is quickly eaten by the mist. It sees an access point; it charges into her mouth, her throat.Keep moving, keep moving. Don’t cough, don’t cough.
Somehow, she doesn’t cough. Or stop moving. And, as the mist slowly falls away, it carries with it the panic and the terror and Winnie’s certainty that the Whisperer must berightthere. The mist really did clean her and warm her and wash away what she did not need.
And at last, her own hunter senses awaken. Her vision sharpens behind her glasses; her heartbeat steadies; and the mist slowly crawls back down to the forest floor.
Jay grinds to a halt, stopping Winnie beside him. She does not speak; he does not speak; and with near-silent movements, they both crouch low to the earth. Thirty paces away is a nightmare. It has yet to turn its snuffing face upward and notice the hunters nearby—hunters without weapons, without backup or alarm lanyards, withnothingbut each other and a very, very long way to go.
Then the creature lifts its head, and Winnie gets a full glimpse of exactly what it is and what it can do to them.
Sadhuzag: A rare but massive stag with seventy-four antler prongs and razor-sharp hooves. Though not flesh eaters, they will kill any who enter their territory, including other nightmares. As of this writing, the sadhuzag has only ever risen in the Italian and Swedish forests.
And apparently, the American forest too. Under normal circumstances, such as from the safety of a classroom or even corpse duty, Winnie would be overjoyed by this fact. Even now, a little spark in the back of her brain is like,Oh my god, I can’t wait to tell Mario.The survival component of her brain, however, is gauging whether or not they can outrun that thing. Its tawny legs are almost as long as Winnie is tall, and those antlers…
They must reach six feet off its head and span eight feet wide. Each prong glints with a pearlescent sheen—as if they are so sharp, light does not know how to land upon them.
How the creature can even lift its neck with so much weight is unfathomable to Winnie, but then again, it doesn’t really matterhowthe sadhuzag keeps its head upright so much as that it does.
Still, Winnie’s mind can’t resist adding a footnote to the printed Compendium in her closet:The weight of antlers does not limit the sadhuzag’s movement, but the sheer girth of the seventy-four prongs must. It will not fit in tight spaces.
