Page 87 of The Hunting Moon
What if, when Winnie was twelve, she had actually looked at her best friend and instead of sayingHelp meshe had said,Please, let me help you.And what if when Rachel had told her four years ago,I’m sorry, I have to follow the rules,Winnie had said,No, I don’t think you actually do.
But Winnie never did any of that, and now it is all too late. This locket will roast a hole through her chest, and then the flames will eat her—all while this crow drags Jay farther and farther away. A boy who was never actually out of reach like Winnie thought he was.
At that thought, the heat in her locket seems to cool. A brief recession of that focused, scoring burn—and light flickers at the edge of Winnie’s vision. Several flashes all at once, like paparazzi arriving on the scene.
Then tens of will-o’-wisps flare so bright Winnie has no choice but to close her eyes against their silvery flames. Despite the spell, despite the unrelenting whispers that hold her trapped in place, her eyelids snap shut.
And in that moment, the locket completely cools. The whispers fade from her muscles, her heart, her veins.Some nightmares,she thinks,deserve to live.
The crow screams.
CHAPTER45
Winnie is able to move now. Her muscles are stiff from the magic, from the crouch, but what she lacks in grace, she makes up for in fury. She tackles the crow, who glows white from the will-o’-wisps all around.
The crow drops Jay, and Winnie slams her to the ground with all the force of the bear she really is. But where Winnie expects spells and whispers as defense, she instead gets a knee to the groin, then a deft flip onto her back.
This Diana is well trained.
But so is Winnie.
Winnie punches sideways, knocking the woman’s elbow outward and collapsing her body onto Winnie’s chest. Then she uses her own knee to weave through the woman’s legs and flipherthis time.
They land at the rill that surrounds the island. The merest trickle of water that Winnie stomped through, then Rachel stomped through too. Water splashes, a spray of cold in this orange dome of heat.
Winnie wastes no time: she grabs for the crow’s mask. If she can just get it off, if she can justseewho is underneath this horrifying, inhuman thing. Her fingers close around a beak.
And it’s like touching a source—or at least it’s like what she was warned that touching a source might feel like. Powerbooms!outward. It barrelsinto Winnie like a freight train. Like a cargo jet. Like the sadhuzag amped up on phoenix powder.
Winnie flies off the crow. Literally, her body launches backward through the air and only stops when her back and skull crack against the red cedar. Her breath kicks out of her. Her vision shadows into nothing. Distantly, she feels her skeleton and muscles crumple beneath her, totally detached from the signals in her brain that scream,Keep fighting! Keep fighting!
She can’t keep fighting. She can’t move. All she can do is collapse at the base of a cedar still dyed by Jay’s blood and watch the crow approach, backlit by flame.
The woman’s mask is broken, leaving only her mouth and jaw hidden. She is a half-human, half-bird monster. Pale flesh with a sharp beak to poke down. Without her glasses, Winnie can’t fasten onto any distinctive features. Even if she did still have her lenses, she can barely hold her eyes open anyway. The world buckles and twists, from heat and whispers and a blow to the brain that really needs a doctor’s attention.
Winnie isn’t going to get a doctor’s attention. No Andrew in scrubs to hold her hand like he did after the werewolf bite. No Mom and Darian to show up beside her hospital bed saying,Oh, thank god you made it!
The crow approaches, and Winnie notes with hazy satisfaction that the woman is limping. Badly. Her boot hits something. It kicks a small object Winnie’s way.
And in the flames, the object glows red as a pure heart, throbbing and alive.
It is the unmarked vial from Jay’s desk. It is the last item in Winnie’s arsenal and the one item that her forever-scrolling Compendium could not explain. But she either trusts the forest or she doesn’t. She either trusts her best friend or she doesn’t.
Winnie clasps the red vial in one hand and wiggles out the cork. It falls sluggishly to the ground while the crow bows over Winnie. Her gray hair is long, most of it fallen from a bun she’d worn beneath her mask.
“What is this?” the crow asks, her voice fully human now. She plucks the vial easily from Winnie’s grasp and peers within. Her beak almost reaches the red mouth.
Winnie tries to stand, but all the crow does is thrust a hand against Winnie’s chest… and Winnie topples right back against the tree. Hereyes sink shut. The fire is finally dying, its phoenix-feather fuel burned to nothing, but there is a new sound to crackle over the night—like a broken carburetor trapped inside a vending machine. The Whisperer has finally arrived at the beckoning of its Diana master.
It’s like these nightmares only show up when you’re around, Winnie. Or like you’ve got some special power that only letsyousee them.
Not a special power after all. Just Winnie’s name on a very unfortunate Venn diagram. If only shewerethe one at the heart of it all instead of the Whisperer, then maybe there would still be something that she could do. Some undiscovered use for her not-so-special power.
“Oh,” the crow murmurs, a sound thick with surprise.
And Winnie lugs her eyes open, just in time to see white spewing out of the red vial like a fairy-tale genie from a lamp. It is a thick fog that rises into the night, soon shrouding the crow’s face from view and masking everything in Winnie’s blurred range of sight.
With it comes that balmy warmth Winnie has learned to recognize.
