Page 78 of The Hunting Moon
In another half mile, Winnie will reach Lizzy’s camera. The one that captured Jay as he passed. She prays no other cameras have spotted him. She prays no hunters have yet tracked him down.
The good thing is that the forest kills most radio signals. Even if Lizzy sees Jay on one of her screens, communicating that to Aunt Rachel or anyone else will take time. She’ll radio to a contact in the hunters’ parking area, who will send a typed message to Rachel—but that message mighttake a minute or an hour to actually reach the small pager on Rachel’s hip. If it even gets there at all.
Of course, if Rachel and her hunters are good enough, they’ll never need Lizzy’s help to track the werewolf. Six bolts in the abdomen.Six bolts in the abdomen.It will take a miracle for Jay to survive that.
Winnie hopes she can be that miracle.
She pushes herself faster. Her eyes scan left, right. She shifts her bag once more onto her back. Tightens the straps for good measure. Then checks that her hunting knives are still within easy reach.
The terrain changes, no longer silt shore but rocky bank. The stream’s channel narrows and deepens. The current picks up speed, its burble growing to a churn. It is right as Winnie pushes through the draping tendrils of a willow so she can circle around that she hears a sound she prayed she would not hear tonight.
Whispers.
At once, she drops low and ducks back into the willow’s dangling branches. Then she holds her breath and waits. Where is the Whisperer? Which direction is it moving? Or was that sound just a trick of the wind?
No.There it is again. Louder, closer… If Winnie is going to get away, she’s going to have to sprint at full speed. Her adrenaline spikes. Her whole body feels like it shrinks down to half its usual size. Except…
There’s something else within the whispers. Soft, padded beats like foot- steps.People,Winnie realizes, and the longer she listens—breath still seized tight inside her lungs—the more she notices other details.
The absence of the burning plastic smell.
The absence of a charge to pluck and pull at her skin.
Then three figures emerge on the shoreline beyond the willow tree, and Winnie’s breath loosens.
It isn’t the Whisperer at all. It’s just four peoplewhispering.
Hunters,Winnie decides, squinting in the darkness to watch their black armor—almost identical to her own—slink past. Three smaller figures and a tall, broader one. Winnie can’t make out defining features, though, or which Wednesday hunters they might be. The shadows of the night smear their faces like a hand dragged through fresh pencil. It gives them strange heads that aren’t human, aren’t helmet.
Then a flame flares, quick and tiny like a lighter being toggled into life. It vanishes almost as soon as it appears, and in that moment, Winnie sees the strangest thing—something incomprehensiblyweirdin an entire forest where nothing is normal.
For the humans before her don’t look human. Three of the figures have charcoal-colored heads shaped like dogs, with sharp snouts and sharper ears. The fourth figure is avian, their charcoal-colored skull rounded while a golden beak protrudes.
This is all Winnie sees before the four figures and the flare of light all disappear. Completely, instantly—it’s all just gone. Even the algae-slick boulders that line the stream vanish from Winnie’s sight, leaving only clotted darkness and the ceaseless burble of a stream through the night.
Then comes burning plastic, acrid and unforgiving. It spears up Winnie’s nostrils, and her breath locks up tight again. Her adrenaline spikes anew, so hard this time, it feels like she got stabbed directly with a syringe of it into her heart.
Because with that scent comes understanding: these are Dianas and they just cast a spell that hid them from view. Three hounds and a crow, here in the forest. Here in Hemlock Falls. And using magic right next to Winnie.
The small flame was amundanusspell,says Winnie’s newly acquired Diana knowledge, diagnosing what she sees just like her ever-present Compendium.So was the erasure of the witches. Both weremundanusspells—easy to cast and requiring little power.
Winnie forces herself to exhale. Her breaths are so shallow, she’s afraid she might pass out. And although her thighs scream at her for holding this crouch too long, she doesn’t move.
The hounds and the crow remain hidden by magic for several moments, and their whispers fade beneath themundanushiding spell. Winnie squints and strains for anything to hear, anything tosee.But she gets nothing.
Nothing except the certainty that there are four Dianasright herein the forest. It was never one Diana who framed Dad. It was four—or more?—and now they are standingright in frontof Winnie.
Her glasses slide down her nose. She is too afraid to adjust them. The burn in her thighs slides down into her calves like lava flow, and up into her lower back too. She just grits her teeth and ignores it.
Soon enough, the shadowy spell that hid the Dianas dissolves. It’s like watching rain destroy a sandcastle: the unnatural darkness grows pocked and porous, boulders appearing and bits of stream. Then come armored limbs and hound ears, combat boots and a crow’s glittery beak, until eventually all four figures stand once more upon the shore.
The largestcanisappears to be keeping guard now, several paces away from the group with a single hand aloft as if about to start a lecture. The stance reminds her of Professor Samuel at the whiteboard.
The other two hounds are crouched beside the water as if studying something.
And the fourth figure—the onlycornix—stands with a ramrod authority beside the bent-backed hounds.
Thecornixspeaks, a whispery sound that oozes out of its mask like air from a shredded tire. A kneeling hound answers with the same whisper, and the second kneeling hound does too—and with a sickening sort of lurch, Winnie realizes they’re speaking. Not just in another language, but in another form of communication entirely.
