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Fat drops of water began to hit my face as I hurried into the scrubby woods to find the coarse purple roots and healing herbs.

Was it the strange greenish sky that had chased off the animals?

My fingers felt cold as I hurried to the spot where I knew the plant would be. I should have put on Rhyder’s sweatshirt.

But then I wasn’t supposed to be outside at all.

There it was!

My chilled fingers scrabbled at the dirt, hastily jerking at the tough roots, ripping them out of the soil. I hadn’t thought to bring my herb bag either, so I just gathered them up in my plain gray skirt and headed back.

The wind had picked up, spitting water at me now as another flash, even closer this time, lit up the dank bare woods.

I saw a flash of the settlement between trees, and I ran faster.

Almost there

Then dark shapes passed across the tree line and I stopped, throwing myself behind a nearby elm tree.

And I saw why I had been told to stay inside.

The men of the Congregation were gathered in a circle and all I could see was blood. Their bodies, all naked from the waist up, were slick with it.

In front of them were crumpled, savaged bodies.

I could see by the bloodied jacket patches now hung around the deadly circle that these men were what was left of the Congregation that had attacked us at the Reaping, sent wild animals to savage us.

Rhyder was instantly recognizable.

And when he turned around I barely managed to stifle a horrified, despairing gasp.

Bloodmoon madness

Holy Bloodwrath

His eyes were red, a fiery scarlet color covering the whole of his eye, the white and the blue, until it was nothing but blood with only a tiny pinprick of dark pupil there.

The Congregants weren’t talking or praying.

Just grunting, in low guttural tones

Blood, blood, blood, blood

And I looked in his eyes across the woods and I knew he couldn’t see me.

He could only see bloodlust and bloodwrath.

I pressed myself further into the scratchy bark of the elm.

Oh please, don’t let them see me

What were they given to induce bloodmoon madness? How long would it last? How long would Rhyder be trapped by the drug into animalistic savage madness?

I had to get away

Forcing my trembling legs to move, I crouched cautiously down, then slipped as quietly as I could to the shelter of the next tree. One by one. That’s how I’d get back to the safety of our house. I’d go inside and push all the furniture up against the door until the effects of the drug wore off.

But as I crept, a body in the circle turned around slowly, first the massive arm, slick with sweat and blood, then the shoulders, and finally the face, flecked with blood.