A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(97)

“But I’ll take—”

Pippa turns her back to me. “How do we catch it?”

“We chase it to the ravine. Trap it there.” Felicity unbuttons her sleeves, shimmies out of her blouse.

“What are you doing?” I ask, alarmed.

Felicity explains to the others, ignoring me. “Take them off. We can’t catch a deer in corsets and petticoats. We’ll never stand a chance. We’ve got to be naked, like the huntress.”

This whole situation is veering wildly out of control. I feel as if I’m watching a building collapse, with no way to stop it.

Ann folds her arms protectively across her plump middle. “Is it absolutely necessary? Can’t we catch the deer as we are?”

“How exactly will you explain the stains to Mrs. Nightwing?” Felicity is naked now. Pale, like bark whittled raw. Her voice, hard and aching, cuts through the rustle of dry leaves. “Stay if you like. But I won’t go back to the way it was. I can’t.”

Pippa sits on the grass and pulls off her boots, starts removing her petticoats. Ann follows suit.

“Ann, Pippa, listen to me. This isn’t right. You can’t do this. Please listen to me!” They’re paying me no mind, peeling off their garments with frantic fingers. The deer’s head darts up. They crouch low on the forest floor. Felicity holds up a finger for silence. The deer senses danger, bolts for the cover of trees.

With a grunt, they’re up, naked and shining, running toward the woods till they’re nothing but a flurry of white, a flapping of angel’s wings in the moss-covered night.

I chase them as they chase the deer. It slips in and out of trees. Felicity is in the lead, her skin a beacon. I hear the sharp cracking sound of twigs trampled, hear the heavy panting of my own breath in my ears. And then something that sounds like a great crash up ahead where I can’t see.

When I reach the ravine, Ann and Pippa are poised on the edge, breathing hard. The deer is nowhere to be seen. A great chunk of earth wall has been torn away. Carefully, I scoot to the edge. My boot sends showers of dirt and rocks into the ravine, and I have to grab hold of a lowlying root to keep from falling in.

The deer lies wounded at the bottom, struggling to lift its head, making the most awful sounds. Felicity crouches low, creeps closer. She leans over it, stroking the brown fur, making comforting shushing noises. She’s not going to do it. A feeling of relief floods through me as I wait for her to scramble up the embankment.

The clouds shift, stretch out thin as a scream. The moon is dazzling us with its hard fair light. It bathes Felicity in a white like plaster, turns her into a statue frozen in time.

She’s fumbling with something down there in the dark. In an instant, her hand flies up. She brings the rock down with a sickening thud. And again. Again till there’s nothing moving in the ravine but her and creatures too small to detect from where we stand above her. Slowly, Ann and Pippa scuttle down the slope in crablike movements and each take their turns with the rock. Their bare backs, arched and taut, shine in the night. When they move away, the thing at the bottom of the ravine no longer resembles a deer above the neck. The head is pulpy, an overripe melon fallen on the ground and split open in surprised outrage. I turn and vomit into a sparse bush.

When I stagger over again, they’re crawling back up the steep slope on hands and knees. In the dark, the splattered blood looks black as ink on their alabaster skin. Felicity climbs up last. She still grips the blood-slick rock in her hand.

“It’s done,” she says, her voice ripping the still of the night.

This is how the fire starts.

This is how we burn.

Everything is slipping out of my control.

She places the rock in my hand. The weight of it pulls me forward and I stumble. It’s sticky in my hand.

“What happens now?” Ann asks. In the dark, there is no answer, just a slight breeze rustling through the dry leaves over our heads.

“We hold hands and make the door of light appear,” Felicity says.

They join hands and close their eyes but nothing happens.

“Where is it?” Pippa asks. “Why don’t I see it?”

For the first time this evening, Felicity seems lost. “She promised me . . .”

It hasn’t worked. They’ve been tricked. I would feel sorry for them if I weren’t both relieved and appalled.

“She promised . . . ,” Felicity whispers.

Kartik steps into the clearing, stops when he takes us in, bloodstained and half wild. He takes a step back, ready to retreat, but not before Felicity sees him.

“What are you doing here?” she screams.

Kartik doesn’t answer. Instead, his eyes flit to the rock in my hand. I drop it fast, and it hits the earth with a thud.

In that one instant of distraction, Felicity seizes her chance. Grabbing a sharp stick, she charges Kartik, scraping him across the chest. Blood seeps up through the torn shirt, and he doubles over from the surprise of the gash. Her new skill as an archer is on display. She’s got the stick poised, ready to run him through.

“I told you we’d carve your eyes out the next time,” she growls.

I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.

Injured, Kartik is unable to defend himself for the moment.