Page 80 of The Hunting Moon
Winnie thinks of the photograph in Grayson’s desk. Of the locket with a small stain on it and all the items stolen from her room… And of dark, russet eyes.
She pushes back into a quiet clip, this time staying within the trees, where the terrain is smoother and no slippery boulders clog up the way.
It is darker here, the forest’s canopy obliterating moonlight and dulling the world to cold emptiness. Vague shadows indicate where trees await, where scrub and stones and new saplings lurk like monsters ready to drag Winnie down with one misplaced boot. Noises echo in the distance—shrill cries that might be harpies, might be vampira, might be any other assortment of nasty creatures going bump in the night.Pick your nightmare, spin the wheel.
Winnie loses all sense of time or distance. There is only moving cautiouslyforward, listening and scanning and listening and scanning.Dianas in Hemlock Falls. Dianas in the forest. Dianas hunting Jay.
Eventually, Winnie spies a red light blinking in the dark: Lizzy’s camera.
She knows it is aimed away from the stream, so after a brief pause to verify that she is still alone, Winnie tiptoes sideways and circles behind the camera. Once she reaches it, she hits the record button; the red light dies.
Hopefully,Winnie thinks,Lizzy will assume her tech has failed her.She detaches the camera from its tripod—it fits easily into her left hand—and fumbles with buttons until she finds a flash.
It is a risk to use it here. A really, really big risk, which is precisely why those Dianas got so pissed at the hound who cast themundanusspell of flame. Turning on a light and then remaining in one place to use said light…
It could get ugly real fast. Winnie needs to be ready for it.
As soon as the light sprays outward, white and briefly disorienting, Winnie uses her free hand to unstrap a hunting knife from her leg. Then she aims the flash around and searches for signs of werewolf.
She spots the blood right away, in a spray pattern across stones. The trees are evergreen. Pines and firs and hemlocks with needles that rarely fall upon a granite substrate.
One black stain goes toward the stream—the way Winnie just came from and where the Dianas now aim. Another stain drags and drips west into the forest. That was the way Jay appeared to be going on the camera, so it is the way Winnie will go too.
She snaps off the camera’s flash and sets off into the trees.
Winnie is being followed.
A presence curls around her, brushing along the back of her neck every few seconds and tickling into her helmet. It is the sensation of being watched by eyes she cannot see. Yet every time she pauses to crouch low and search, she finds nothing and no one.
She has stowed the camera in her backpack, but the hunting knife shekeeps clutched tight in her right hand. The Compendium meanwhile shuffles through a list of nightmares that stalk their prey.
Arassas, banshee, basilisk, changeling, dryad.Every letter has a stalker associated. In fact, the list is like those handkerchiefs magicians use: once Winnie starts pulling, the names of nightmares just keep coming and coming until there is no way she can possibly guess what it is she’s up against without more information.
But to stop for reconnaissance is to lose precious time as Jay bleeds out somewhere and Dianas and Wednesdays search for him.
Salamander, urus, vampira, velue, were-creature, wyrm.
Then again, not stopping means potentially losing her own life.
Winnie grinds to a halt. She cannot tell if her stalker stops, but shecanbe certain it makes absolutely no noise either way… which is actually a clue. She discards banshee, urus, velue—and tens of other names from her magician’s spool of handkerchiefs. They all rely on sound to lure or disorient their prey.
She also discards vampira, because although they are silent when hunting, she has the very pointed impulse that there is onlyonecreature watching her. She trusts that impulse, even if she doesn’t understand where it comes from.
Then it happens: she sees a slight glisten through a gap in the trees. It looks wet, it looks pale, and she knows right away what she’s up against.
No,she mouths on an exhale, sliding her backpack in front of her.No, no, no.She still holds her knife, which makes opening the bag’s zipper too rough, too loud. But there’s little point in being quiet now. She is cornered and she needs to act.Fast.
Because the changeling is on the move. It has abandoned its silence and is charging this way. Underbrush shakes and a crude, choking sound comes from its throat.
Changeling: These daywalkers can perfectly mimic any human they see, though claws give them away.
Winnie’s fingers find the vial she wants right as the changeling emerges from cover, a slimy and unformed blob currently in its larval form.
The larval form of a changeling requires human blood to first begin human mimicry and develop claws.
This is, yet again, a nightmare that the Compendium has failed to fully capture. The drawing might show the main anatomy and the overall bipedal shape, but no illustration can contain the wriggling movement of its limbs. The unformed, malleable nature of its featureless face.
It is a piece of clay waiting to taste Winnie’s blood, waiting to become her. And she cannot kill it with just a blade—the flesh will simply move around the knife like dough around a mixing spoon.
