Page 51 of The Luminaries
She inhales. The faint dregs of a fading mist warm her nostrils. The vampira are still rattling away with their fangs, and she hears a fewmoving—audible only because they think they are alone and stealth is not their priority. Trees rustle. Two vampira snarl at each other.
Vampira hordes can range anywhere from ten members to over one hundred.Winnie thinks this horde is on the smaller end.They move with sophisticated coordination and speed, following the lead of a bellwether. To eliminate the bellwether is to slow the horde.
There is no way for Winnie to sense which one is the bellwether, and her time is almost up. She needs to move, she needs tomove.
Winnie moves. She shoves away from the tree, unsheathing her machete. It’s not graceful, it’s not quick, but she gets the blade out before the vampira can fully process that she is there.
And oh god, it’s more than ten. There are least twenty directly between her and the burbling stream. They look like long shadows, like crooked saplings in the darkness.
So she doesn’t aim for the stream. Instead, she bolts right, where the clattering of fangs is not so thick. There are still two vampira in her way, though.
She hacks at the first—aiming right for the knee like the Compendium said. And it’s as if the forest knows what she’s about to do. Like it has decided right then and there that ifthisis to be her course of action, then she should really see what she’s up against.
Trust me?it asks.Do you really dare?
The clouds part. A burst of moonlight flares down, illuminating the vampira in perfect, horrific detail—and now is one of those moments where time actually seems to slow. The creature is both exactly like the diagram in the Compendium, and exactly like her copied sketch of one…
And also nothing like it. There are its pointed, needlelike feet that pierce the soil without leaving a mark. There are its long, stilt-like legs covered in a rough silvery skin that could easily be mistaken for bark in the shadows. There is its shrunken torso and its two-jointed arms. There are its bladelike hands with spines along the edges.
And there is its head, hairless and long with a jaw that hinges sideways. Its fangs gleam in the light, three on each side of its mouth, each as long as Winnie’s fingers.
There’s no time to be afraid of that mouth. No time for anything, because the clock is surging forward again and the vampira’s blade arms are rearing back for a slicing attack.
But Winnie has already started her own attack—she can’t stop it now even if she wants to. The machete slices into the vampira’s knee. It doesn’t go through like the Compendium described. She doesn’t hit the joint at the right spot or with the proper angle, but the steel still beats against bone. The nightmare still screams.
Winnie yanks back the blade. The vampira falls, and Winnie starts running again.Sprintingexactly like Jay told her not to do.
A second vampira lunges. Winnie rolls sideways. Badly, but enough to dodge the monster. And somehow, out of sheer luck, it impales itself on her blade. The machete spikes into its torso, between the bilateral ribs that float like a human’s. Then into a heart that Winnie knows beats within. It screams. Winnie releases the blade. It collapses and she keeps running.
No machete now, but not defenseless—because she has an idea.
The forest thrashes behind her as she kicks her knees high. The clouds have graciously remained parted, so she can see the roots to avoid and rocks to leap over. Amazing how she ever thought the forest was dark. There is so much light here it feels like day.
She grabs for the stun grenade on her belt. Assuming every vampira is following her—a safe assumption—she can stun maybe half of them. But she won’t have time to see where they are. She’s going to have to throw and hope for the best.
Which is exactly what she does. She yanks out the pin, just like Rachel showed her (god, was that only nine hours ago?), and runs left to where the stream is. She prays everything Jay told her is accurate.
Winnie throws the grenade behind her. Three steps become five become—
Crack.The grenade goes off in a burst of light that Winnie was waiting for. She covers her eyes just in time.
The vampira scream. A collective sound that starts with one throat in particular: one that’s right behind Winnie.The bellwether.She glances back, following the shredding cries of its inhuman throat until she finds it, no different from all the rest except that somehow it’s the one in charge.
Winnie reaches the stream and leaps over. The waters are even sadder than she remembers, and already the clouds are returning above. Blanketing the forest in the shadows it so loves.
Winnie sprints onward. Not for long—Jay’s advice still rings in her mind, and already she has almost tripped twice—but long enough to put some distance between her and the still-howling vampira.
The vampira don’t follow. She doesn’t know if it’s because of the grenade or the stream, but for now, they don’t follow. She slows to a jog. Then a panting walk because she’s making too much noise and that grenade will draw new nightmares. But this time as she moves, she withdraws a shrapnel trap from her backpack. She will be ready for whatever comes next.
When she spots the hemlock, a black tower against the sky, Winnie finds herself almost disappointed. While facing the horde, she felt like the bass line in a Forgotten song. She was awake, euphoric, alive. Part of her wants more of that—to take on the nightmares again, hacking through knees and viscera.
Gone is Winnie’s guilt over the banshee lie. As she climbs the hemlock, finding the iron spikes Jay put in—spaced in such a way as to be almost invisible—she can’t stop thinking how this is where she is meant to be.
She belongs in the forest. She belongs as a Luminary. She belongs as a hunter.
And Jay was right: Winnie isn’t as bad as she thinks she is. Hell, she might even begood.
She spiders up the trunk, lacking Jay’s grace or strength, but the handholds are close enough together that she doesn’t have trouble reaching the first branch. Then the second, and finally the third—the one Jay showed her that could hold her all night.
