Page 85 of The Hunting Moon
But Winnie knows all too well how lies only breed more lies, and secrets only fester into wounds. There have been enough of both of those over the last four years.
That’s when it occurs to Winnie that maybethisis where all the darkness comes from. It’s not that people compartmentalize the loss, the pain, the violence, it’s not that people eat all the pizza… It’s that they eat all the pizza and pretend it’s because they’re hungry. They compartmentalize and then pretend the lockbox inside them doesn’t exist.
Maybe, just maybe, Rachel has a whole buffet of problems all padlocked and hidden too. Contacts for eyes that can’t see 20/20. Chinks in armor that protect a weak, human heart. So maybe, just maybe, Winnie needs to step outside herself once more tonight, outside this island filled with fragile moonlight folding down, andlookat what is really going on around her.
Winnie releases Jay and rises clumsily to her feet. The forest wavers beyond her dirty glasses; her blood pulses in her ears; and Rachel’s face telescopes upward, following her niece’s ascent.
She is like a squire waiting to be knighted.
“Please,” Winnie murmurs to her aunt. She brings her hands together as if to clasp them… but then lets them fall limp to her sides. “Pleaselet the wolf go and let me prove that he’s innocent. Forme,Aunt Rachel. For our family. Just let us both walk away from here.”
Rachel’s eyes shutter. Her breath slides out, foggy and loud. A heartbeat passes. Two. The blood in Winnie’s ears throbs louder. It sounds like the waterfall at the Big Lake. It sounds like the white noise rattling from an ancient furnace…
Oh no,Winnie thinks, and at the same moment, Rachel’s eyes snap wide. Winnie twists toward the island’s edge, to where the rill might hold back nightmares, but it won’t hold back people.
Then there they are: three of the Dianas stalk from the trees.
Two hounds have their hands up, and Winnie watches in a horrified slow motion as something solid and golden flies through the air directly toward her.Sagitta aurea,she thinks, right before two magicked arrows collide with her rib cage.
Except the golden arrows never make impact.
Because Aunt Rachel leaps in the way.
One.The first bolt of light chunks through Rachel’s shoulder, puncturing all the way through until a glowing tip punches out of Rachel’s back.
Two.The second hits Rachel’s stomach, a cruel repeat of what she did to Jay.
Then Aunt Rachel’s limp body hits Winnie and they both crash to the ground.
CHAPTER44
Winnie is trapped beneath her aunt, Rachel’s torso draped over her like a horrifying weighted blanket. Rachel doesn’t move, although her body is still warm. Scalding, in fact, as if thesagitta aureaspell heated her from the inside out.
A sandpapery squawk fills the air.
It is laughter. The two hounds arelaughing,and just as their words distorted into whispers, their laughs now distort into this callous scrape of vocal cords.
It’s the masks,Winnie realizes—a fuzzy thought inside a brain that can’t quite grab hold of reality because her aunt is sprawled atop her and the night seems much too dark.The masks change their voices.
Winnie tries to rise. To see if Rachel can be healed, saved, protected… but all it takes is one look at her aunt’s face for Winnie to know there is nothing she can do. There is no color in Rachel’s skin, no movement in her now-bloodied chest.
There is no life.
The two hounds stride this way, their whispers rising toward the moon like wasps shaken from their nest.Why did I waste the melusine blood?Winnie thinks, a pointless thought with no useful answer.Why did I waste it on a boy I couldn’t save?Because Jay is lost too. He too has no color, no movement, no life.
The hissing laughter of the hounds rises. Their dark shapes tromp closer,thirty feet away at most and moving with the languid ease of predators who have their prey cornered. The third Diana, the leader, hangs back. Their masked head swivels from side to side like a real crow’s.
Cornices: These elected witches maintain roles of leadership within Diana society. To be eligible, one must have both skill and experience.
Static builds in the air, and Winnie doesn’t need the noxious smell in her nose to realize the crow is preparing a spell—all while the hounds keep laughing. Winnie twists her body toward Jay, a movement that removes the last of Rachel’s dead weight. That suddenly frees up muscles Winnie knows she needs to use.
She cannot save Rachel. She cannot save Jay. The only person she can still save tonight is herself. In fact, if she gets up now and runs, she might be able to escape without pursuit. It’s what a real black bear would do: bellow and charge just for show, then run far away in the end.
But then, Winnie has never been a very good Wednesday bear, has she? Her loyalty has always been in the wrong place, and lately, her cause hasn’t aligned with anyone else’s. So if these Dianas are going to attack her and expect her to flee, then they are in for quite a surprise.
Especially since they aren’t the only ones with nightmare powers at their command.
Winnie scoops up her backpack and fumbles out the harpy gastroliths. They bounce and tink within the glass, though she can’t hear them. All she hears are the approaching whispers, laughing and laughing like hyenas brought back from the grave.
