Page 84 of The Hunting Moon
“Because that’s who it is, isn’t it?” Rachel releases her draw and snaps down the bow. Her arrow, however, stays noticeably nocked. “Why else would you be out here, Winnie? Who else would you want to protect?”
“Lots of people.” This isn’t a lie, but Winnie’s voice trembles all the same.
And Rachel scowls. “I don’t want to kill Jay. I don’t want to killanyone,but if I don’t bring in that werewolf, then someone else will. The whole town has been alerted that we shot it. Tuesday scorpions are on their way here right now.”
Somehow, Winnie dies a little bit more. “Oh,” she tries to say, but only a sigh escapes, wintery as the forest always is. Because scorpions will be a lot harder to fight off than Aunt Rachel—and more inclined to shoot Winnie and Jay simultaneously. “Please…” Winnie pushes at her crooked glasses. “The werewolf won’t hurt anyone. Just let him go, Aunt Rachel. Please, just let us both go.”
“I can’t do that.” Rachel advances a step toward Winnie. Her sweaty face glistens like the changeling’s. Fallen hair from her ponytail clings to her face. “I shot him, and now I’m going to deliver him to the proper authorities. Which means you are going to step aside.”
Winnie doesn’t move, and Rachel claims another four steps until she is close enough for Winnie to spot a tear in the abdomen of her armor. To notice dirt smeared on her cheek and a cut across her chin.
“How exactly do you think this will end, Winnie? If I know who the werewolf is, and I’ve seen you protecting him…” Rachel’s nose wrinkles, although not with disgust so much as heartbreak. “You’re ruining everything your family just got returned to them. For what?”
Yes,Winnie thinks, her eyes closing. The night disappearing.For what?“For loyalty,” she whispers, and something hot tickles down her spine. The bear flag on her family’s porch flaps and waves across her mind. “For loyalty,” she repeats, opening her eyes. “For the cause. Because if we don’t care about each other—if that isn’t the ultimate point of all of this…” Winnie waves around her, at the forest, at the night, at all the monsters coming this way. “Then there is nothing left butdarkness,and there won’t ever be any light. There won’t ever be a reason to keep fighting.”
It’s a pretty speech, and maybe under different circumstances, it would have had an impact. But as it stands, the instant Winnie uttersfighting,the wolf wheezes loudly, pitifully, behind her.
And the standoff ends.
As Winnie whirls about to check if Jay still lives, Rachel uses the distraction to charge in. They both grab for the wolf in synchrony. Rachel grabs his back legs and Winnie drops beside his head.
Then she and her aunt stare at each other, separated only by a nightmare who never asked to be one.
It is uncanny how much Rachel looks like Winnie’s mom in that moment. There is a weight that tows at her brow, a heavy sadness in her dark eyes, and there is something about the moonlight eking down that sets off silver in her hair.
The cut on Rachel’s chin oozes blood.
“Don’t do this,” Rachel murmurs. “Walk away, Winnie, and no one ever needs to know you were here.”
“No.” Winnie rests a hand on the wolf’s brow. His fur is frozen to the touch; soon he will be one more body that needs retrieving on tomorrow’s corpse duty. His eyes are closed. His bloodied torso is barely moving.
“If you let me take him,” Rachel presses, “I can get him to the hospital. We can keep him alive.”
“What?” Winnie sputters a laugh that echoes over the island. “Take anightmareto the Monday hospital? So they can what—heal him? And then give him to the Tuesdays for execution?”
Rachel’s lips compress. “Would you rather the wolf keep executing Luminaries?”
“He hasn’t, though. He hasn’t killed anyone.” Winnie’s head shakes. “He hasn’t evenhurtanyone, Aunt Rachel. He has only ever helped.”
“He bit you—”
“To save me from drowning. And he saved Emma too, from a harpy.” Winnie pulls Jay’s body to her, a rough movement that tips Rachel off-balance. Brings her dark, familiar eyes closer. “And who knows how many other lives he has saved? He is one of us. He’s a Lead Hunter, just like you, and he is my best friend. Please don’t let this be his end.”
Rachel huffs a hard breath from her nose, expression completely unchanged. “Winnie, I don’t have a choice. We’re the cause above all else—theLuminarycause—and we are loyalty through and through. No one has to find out you were here, but to let this wolf walk free is to kill people.” Now she is the one who yanks Jay closer, tipping Winnie off-balance. “Andto keep arguing,” Rachel adds, her face so near that Winnie sees every creasing line, “is to kill him too.”
She’s right. Winnie knows her aunt is right. Jay is already a ghost; soon he will disappear entirely. He needs healing—real, complete healing that she can’t give him. But if she releases him, if she agrees to Rachel’s terms…
Well, Jay might last the night, but he won’t last another day. All she has to do is look at what happened to her family for simplyhousinga man they never knew was a Diana. What will the Luminaries do—what will the scorpions and the Councildoto a boy who is a nightmare?
“What if,” Winnie tries in one last attempt to salvage this night of her relentless wrongs, “I can prove Jay didn’t hurt anyone? What if I can prove the Whisperer did it all?”
“Winnie.” Rachel says this with an unexpected tenderness, and her face finally softens. As if she has heard this argument before. As if she knows it’s ultimately futile, and Winnie will only end this night in pain. As if she really, truly doesn’t want to hurt her only niece.
And Winnie can’t help but wonder if maybe Mom made a similar plea four years ago.What if I can prove my husband wasn’t a Diana?
For several breaths, Winnie watches her aunt. There are thin lines around Rachel’s irises. Contacts like Winnie refuses to wear—and like Mom has never needed. It’s an unexpected weakness, a chink in the armor for a Lead Hunter who hasn’t wavered in four years and who has always put loyalty and the cause above everything else.
Or has she? After all, Rachel lied for Winnie after Winnie’s first trial, pretending she believed that Winnie had killed a banshee. Then she kept on lying afterward, keeping the banshee secret from all the Wednesdays, from all the Luminaries. Now she has offered to lie yet again:Walk away. No one has to find out you were here.
