Page 121 of The Whispering Night
“Do it!” Martedì shouts in a voice made of thunderclaps. As if her mask magnifies her words, turning her into an all-powerful godling. “Do it now, Erica, or I will make sure everyone you love is destroyed.”
Winnie throws her knife, but it’s useless. The blade simply bounces off the Crow, deflected as if hitting a force field.
“DO IT, ERICA. NOW.”Martedì whips Erica higher, and a cry rips from Erica’s throat. Partly pained, mostly defeated.
Then come the words Winnie doesn’t want to hear. The words that mean,We are one in sleep and dreams. We are one in waking.
The explosion that ripples out is devastating. It flings Winnie back—along with everyone else on the shore. Nightmare, Luminary, Diana. Everyone topples like wheat beneath a scythe. All except Martedì, who leans into the wave as if she knew this was coming. As if shelovesit, and by the power of the forest, give hermore.
Worse—so much worse—a tunnel begins opening into the water. It pulls at Erica, sucking her into the lake as if she really is nothing more than protons and dirt dug into the carpet.
Winnie rises. She runs. The earth no longer pulses with a heartbeat. Now, there is only the chaos of the resuming supercell storm.
She drops her second knife because it’s no use against the Crow or the waking spirit. All Winnie needs are her smarts, all she needs are her instincts.“Stop!”she screeches at Martedì, who stalks toward the watery tunnel carving into the waves.“Stop!”
Martedì doesn’t stop. She probably can’t hear Winnie over the universecollapsing. So Winnie pushes herself harder. She’s close to the Crow now. Close to this uncanny hole spiraling into the Big Lake.
That is when two things happen. First, a bird drops out of the sky and starts squawking. It flaps and claws into Martedì’s face, forcing the woman to stop right at the tunnel’s edge. Which gives Winnie enough time to catch up. To rush onto the first stretch of exposed silt and rocks and weeds.
Then the second thing happens: the melusine returns. It propels itself from the water like a wave come to life. Its tail morphs into legs.Webbed feet,Winnie notices for the first time.And very sharp claws.It attacks the Crow—and this time, Martedì has no choice but to stop and fight back.
Winnie stampedes past them. The melusine doesn’t notice her, nor does Martedì. But the crow—theavianone… It screams a throaty caw at Winnie before flapping away. And sure, why not? A sentient crow on top of everything else makes total sense here.
Winnie looks back only once, to check the battle that has laid claim to the beach and forest. Golden arrows fly against nightmares, against Luminaries—and a lone signora still fights against a melusine with scales that shine like a sunrise.
Winnie enters the Big Lake.
Possession: Though rare, there are reports of forest spirits briefly possessing humans and using them to accomplish tasks that nightmares cannot complete, such as destroying sensory equipment or killing hunters. The hosts rarely survive the encounter.
The ground is silty and sopping as it slopes downward. Already Erica is fifty feet ahead. She doesn’t look conscious. She doesn’t even look alive. But if Winnie won’t give up on Jay, then she sure won’t give up on Erica either.
She pushes the muscles of her quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes faster. She channels every ounce of speed into legs that haven’t felt relief in hours. That haven’t had calories in even longer. But that is what the melusine’s caress was for.Keep going. Keep going.
T minus this is the end.
I miss you more now. Now that it’s been so long.
Water fuses into a liquid wall behind Winnie, and though light still pours down from above, the deeper she runs, the less light reaches her. It reminds her of an aquarium she went to once, when she was eleven. There was a tunnel that went right through the shark tank. Now, instead of Chondrichthyes to swim around Winnie, there are sirens, kelpies, river sylphids. They whip and flash, keeping pace with Winnie in a way she really hopes isn’t predatory.
Each time the shadows move, green bioluminescence ignites. It doesn’t make her think of fireworks now. Instead, she thinks of fish food. She thinks of Grayson’s funeral and his ashes tossed into the Big Lake.May Grayson find peace in his long sleep at the heart of the forest.That was how the eulogy ended because that is how they always end.
Winnie’s boots slomp in the silt and trip through plants drooped across the substrate.Erica, Erica.She just has to reach Erica. She just has to stay ahead of the water stalking behind.
Her breathing turns pained. The air is humid like a spa. Like the hot room. And all the gurgling from the encroaching lake—they’re just pumps and pipes and furnaces to keep Winnie hidden away from Tuesdays.
God, if only she could go back to that moment in Jenna’s secret corner. If only Winnie couldlistento the harmonic overtones in Erica’s words and push her friend for more answers. For more truth.
There’s something important in that thought. Something that is digging at Winnie’s frontal lobe like it’s another scratch-off lottery ticket. But she has no time to scrape in search of matching numbers. She is still running down into a lake that wants to crush her.
The descent flattens, and Erica slides like a sea slug, her body carving a groove through silt. Each rock she bumps into makes her eyelids open.
If she’s alive, there is no sign of it.
A droplet plops onto Winnie’s head. It’s so hot, so startling that she looks up.Oh shit.The lake has sealed over her. And any light still letting her see, move, run—it isn’t coming from overhead. It’s coming from the center of the lake, from a silvery glow that…
Oh yes, is pulsing.
Pure Heart. Trust the Pure Heart.
