Page 69 of The Whispering Night
Someone grunts and rolls. A nightmare snarls. “Winnie!” Jay’s voice twists around her in horrifying ways. “Hellion on your left!”
Yes. There it is, lunging at her with fangs bared. She has seen hellions so many times, but always dead, always damaged by hunter bolts or shrapnel grenades. She has just enough time to think,My what big teeth you have!before its front paws land against her.
She falls to the wooden floor, her chin barely tucking inward to avoid concussive contact. Heat sears against her, mist and snarling saliva and a breath that reeks of carrion.
Fangs lurch close, along with eyes as fiery as the pits of hell the beast is named for.This is what killed Grandma Winona. This is how she died.
Jay slams into the hellion’s side, and it flings off Winnie—although not without claws shredding over her leather jacket.
A gust of wind punches in from the nearby roof-access window, clearing mist and revealing Jay and the hellion locked in a match of strength that Jay is not going to win. Winnie scrabbles to her feet, half crawling across the room to the easel. “Sorry,” she says to the future dead, yanking the wood to her. One kick at the right leg, then another for the left.
“Jay,” she barks. “Catch!” She flings one of her two newly made stakes his way.
And for a fraction of a second, she remembers doing this before: throwing a stake at Jay. Except he was a wolf then, and she was trying to kill him instead of save.
The memory is gone before it can fully form. Jay catches the stake as the hellion’s teeth lock onto his forearm.Punch. The stake stabs into the hellion’s neck.Punch.He stabs this one into the skull.
The hellion releases, and Jay shoves the nightmare off him. He’s bleeding, but when Winnie crouches to help him, he waves her off. “More nightmares.” He points with his bloodied arm toward the rotunda—where yes, the screams and shouting and a building roar are impossible to miss.
As are the people sprinting into this antechamber, one of whom is L.A., dressed as a zombified nurse. She catches sight of Winnie and Jay aiming her way and shouts, “Droll! There’s a fuckingdroll!”
Droll: A humanoid nightmare that can range in size from four hundred pounds to almost four thousand. They are best avoided or, if conflict is necessary, then dealt with by many hunters at once. Firearms recommended.
Winnie and Jay do not have firearms.No onein this museum has firearms.
When Winnie and Jay—and now L.A. with them—push through the crowds into the rotunda, the mist has fully cleared, and the droll stands exactly where the old skeleton used to hang.
It’s a big one. Definitely in the thousands of pounds range.
Jay sprints ahead of Winnie, taking stock of the situation faster than Winnie can possibly absorb it. Her brain is still trapped in the gallery where a Dianacanisgave her birthday cards and saved her from a golden arrow.Except, why was a golden arrow coming for me? Why would the Crow want to hurt me?
“L.A.! Trevor!” Jay shouts, flying for the stairs. “Aim for the knees!”
Jay jumps. Right off the staircase and leaping the balustrade like it’s nothing. He lands on the droll’s shoulder, and the nightmare twists its ugly head toward this obnoxious human—who is somehowstillshouting orders.
It’s incredible. If there weren’t actual lives on the line and actual nightmares in the middle of the old museum, Winnie would just stand here atthe top of the stairs and marvel at her boyfriend.Youngest Lead Hunter in Hemlock Falls.
No wonder he is though.
Jay drops off the droll’s shoulder, landing behind the monster in time for his bandmates to charge in with makeshift weapons. L.A. has a chair leg and Trevor just has the whole chair.
They slam against the droll’s knees. Its bellows writhe all the way into Winnie’s bone marrow, propelling her into action while Jay’s voice somehow pierces the chaos. “Imran, the ribs! Marisol, the face—get it in the fucking eyes!”
Winnie bolts for the stairs; they’re shallow, and she flies down two at a time. Meanwhile, Jay dives and rolls around the droll. His arm sprays blood.
Winnie is halfway down the stairs when the droll turns toward her. Its eyes, huge ogling things, lock onto her and she would swear it laughs. That its grotesque mouth stretches wide, and chuckles bounce out.
It reaches for her on the stairs, hands as large as her torso and arms longer than she is tall. It’s just like the arm she retrieved on corpse duty weeks ago. And its wrist isjustlike the wrist she always draws during class. (So soothing, all those carpal bones.)
A meaty hand grabs her, and Winnie doesn’t have to think.Lunate bone, capitate bone, hamate bone.The spike goes in. The droll screams, high-pitched and pained. Then Winnie reclaims the stake, satisfaction surging through her like a champagne bottle uncorked. Her hunter senses are toggled to max. She wantsmore.
She gets her wish a heartbeat later when Jay appears. He snags the stake from her as he passes, then, just as he’d done before, he clears the balustrade to land on the droll’s shoulder.
This time, though, it’s not a distraction. One stab—that’s all it takes. Right into the ear.
And Winnie finds she is grinning. Jay may never go to school, but hell if he doesn’t know his nightmares.Droll ears are particularly sensitive, their cochlear and vestibular nerves sitting closer to the surface than humans’.
The droll’s ogling eyes start rolling. It’s really screaming now, yet Jay is still barking orders. “Winnie!” he shouts from the ground floor, pointingwith his bloodied arm toward a nearby room called the nightmare gallery.In there,he’s saying.Help in there.
