Page 51 of The Hunting Moon
“Please,” she finds herself saying as she staggers to a nearby beech tree and drops onto a gnarled root. Her glasses are filthy. Sweat pours off her brow.
Jay drops to the earth in front of her. “Leave it,” he tells her quietly, catching her hands before she can try to pull apart the slashed cotton of her joggers and examine the damage.
“It… hurts.”
“Because the sural nerve got hit,” he replies, and Winnie hates how much her traitorous body responds to him saying the wordssural nerveor that she then imagines him studying an anatomy book.Pain is making you ridiculous.
Jay tips forward until his shadowy head blocks her view of her leg. Somehow, although he smells of sweat and forest, the scent of bergamot and limestill wavers through. Winnie is overcome with the urge to curl forward and rest her head on top of his. Take a nap that way or maybe wail her stress and confusion into the trees.
Instead, she squeezes her teeth together and closes her eyes. A good plan, since two seconds later Jay’s fingers move into the cut and pain like a thousand phoenix burns erupts inside her brain.Waymore pain than a simple slash should be causing—even in the sural nerve.
“I think there’s poison in the wound.”
“Venom,” she corrects automatically. “Poison is ingested.” Her teeth grind and grind andgrind.
Jay’s head lifts and Winnie cracks open one eye. A smudge on her glasses blurs over the left half of his face. Despite the distortion, it is impossible to miss the hard fury that has settled over his features.
Except where Winnie expects him to unload on her, he instead seethes: “I’m sorry, Win. I should have been better prepared. My watch must need winding.” He raises his arm, although she can’t see the glass face in this light. “I got the time all wrong.”
“Jay,” Winnie says softly, “we’re here onmybehalf, which makes all of thismyfault.”
“I’m a hunte—” He breaks off, a grimace tightening his eyes. Then he amends, “I’m Lead Hunter. I should know better than this, Win. I’ll go to the Friday estate and get a four-wheeler. Then I’ll come back for you.” He shoves to his feet, stealing the bergamot and lime and blocking out what little light the sky provides. “It’ll take me about an hour. Maybe a little more.”
“Anhour?” Winnie shakes her head, clutching at the rough bark of the beech. She tries to stand. Pain screams through her, and she topples right back down. On attempt number two, however, the muscle holds and she stands before Jay. “I can go with you. I can do this. A four-wheeler will draw attention, and an hour…” Her voice wavers. “I can’t wait an hour.”
“You can’t run, either. Winnie. It’s probably eight miles back to the estate. I can get there fastest by myself and then return—”
“No.” Her voice rips out, louder than she intends and edged with a shrill panic she wasn’t expecting. “I don’t want to be left here alone.” She can’t believe she is uttering this aloud, she can’t believe she evenfeelsthis way. So much for being a tough Wednesday hunter with the forest in her blood.A sadhuzag that shouldn’t be in the American forest almost got her, and now a venom it shouldn’t have is coursing inside her veins.
And what about the will-o’-wisps? Maybe Winnie got it all wrong—maybe they weren’t peaceful observers outside the forest. Maybe they’re stalking Jay and Winnie right now…
Thanks, Dad,she thinks vaguely, a maniacal laughter echoing at the back of her brain.Yet again, you screw up everything.
“Please Jay,” she says more softly. “Please, don’t… leave me alone.”
“I won’t, Winnie,” he murmurs back, sliding his arm behind her and letting her lean against him. “I’ll never leave you alone.”
But you already did,she thinks as they ease into a walk… and then a limping jog.And I wish I could understand why.
CHAPTER28
Winnie’s thoughts leap like the ghost-deer across her brain as she stumbles onward, clutching onto Jay for dear life.
A will-o’-wisp crushed beneath a boot.
A sadhuzag with eyes that glow.
A leaf-lined hole made of granite and stained with blood.
Then of course, the Whisperer.
It lurks beneath everything else, a wordless static like those microwaves left over from the big bang that make radios go crackly. There’s a name for that…cosmic microwave background.It was discovered in the 1960s after scientists kept picking up feedback on their radios.
Why does Winnie know that? Why is she even thinking about it right now?
Occasionally noises rise from the forest. Snarls or a plaintive howl. Once, Winnie hears a familiar, heartbreaking sob that instantly loosens the lock on her compartment labeledDad.It is a banshee, just like the dead one that allowed Winnie to pass her first trial.
Jay hears the banshee too; he tugs Winnie into a jog, then a run until the sound of its grief can no longer cocoon them in sorrow. Winnie was sad to hear it, but she is sadder to hear it go.
