Devour the Dark (Devourer #2)

9. Vane

CHAPTER NINE

VANE

There is carnage everywhere. It immediately takes me back to Darkland when Roc and I both embraced our beasts. We were always ready to devour. Anything and anyone who stood in our way. Back then we had nothing to lose. And we sure as fuck weren’t concerned with the consequences.

Now I have things to protect. Now I have a life I actually like.

I round the corner of the wood shop and come face to face with my brother.

This, too, is a distant reminder of what we were together.

His clothing is torn. His face is bloody. But he’s on his feet, conscious. Another indication that whatever is going on with him, it’s not right. Usually after a devouring, we’re out for hours, sometimes days. He shouldn’t be coherent.

Hook stands beside him, his body tight, ready to fight me.

And there’s an orange kitten on Roc’s shoulder meowing loudly at me.

“Brother,” Roc says.

There are a dozen things I want to say to him. Words I’ve never had the strength to give oxygen to.

He’s come and gone on Neverland since I left our island, but we’ve never been as close as we were when we ruled the Darkland Umbrage. Before Lainey.

Our sister’s death broke something between us.

Sometimes, when I allow myself grief, I mourn the loss of my brother just as much as my sister.

“I need to speak with you,” Roc says.

“I know.”

“Take him.” He hands the kitten to Hook.

“What—” The kitten lands in the cradle of Hook’s arm and then paws at the hook attached to his arm like it’s a play toy. “What am I to do with it?”

“Pet it, Captain.”

Roc starts down the nearest alley and disappears through an open door leading into the back of a bakery. Everyone has abandoned their work posts after his monster charged through, so we find no resistance to our intrusion.

He walks through the kitchen and beneath the archway leading to the bakery’s front shop. There’s a glass case full of fresh baked goods and several glass cloches on the counter displaying cakes and tarts. Beyond the counter are a handful of round tables.

Roc opens a cloche and plucks out two chocolate croissants, then plops down in a chair at the front window.

With the violence over, some of the townspeople have left their hiding spots to spill out into the street. Two men in overalls saunter past, their voices carrying through the cracked front door. They’re complaining about Peter Pan bringing more trouble to the island.

I drop into the chair across from my brother as he bites into a croissant. The pastry crackles beneath his teeth.

“What did you get yourself into, Roc?” I ask.

He stretches out his long legs. “I need the hat.”

“I don’t have the hat.”

He uses his index finger to scoop up a melted glob of chocolate from the open end of the pastry, then sucks it off his finger. “Why would you leave it on Darkland?”

“With the shadow, I can’t devour. I had no need for it.”

“Mmm.” He nods, takes another bite. His gaze strays out the window where a woman picks up the basket she’d abandoned on the street when she fled the scene of Roc’s destruction.

“Why did you devour a witch in the first place? You fucking know better.”

“I was mad.”

I snort. Once upon a time, back on Darkland, we were known as the Madd brothers. A shortening of our surname and an apt descriptor for our family and what we are or what we can become if we’re not careful.

“I can’t control it,” he admits. “It’s getting worse.”

The first croissant is gone now. He’s avoiding looking at me. My brother doesn’t like to ask for help. I think in all the years I’ve known him, he’s never asked for a favor. Not from me, not from anyone.

I get up and go to the bakery’s kitchen. There’s a block of knives by the worktable and I pull out a long, sharp blade. On a shelf above, I find a line of white tea cups and snatch one of those too.

When I return to the front, Roc looks up. At the shine of the blade, he grimaces.

“I don’t want your blood.”

“You’ll fucking take it and shut the fuck up about it.”

I set the teacup in front of him, then press the sharp tine of the blade to my wrist and pull. The shadow hisses at me and shrinks away from Winnie, surging toward me. It doesn’t really speak to me, but the feeling I get when the power floods my veins is, Whatever do you think you’re doing?

I sense Winnie coming to a stop wherever she is in the city.

I’m okay , I tell her, and the worry fades.

The first draw of the knife is nothing more than a scratch. The blade isn’t special, just Winterlander steel, not magical enough to do real damage. I pull again and press harder.

My skin finally breaks, and a bead of blood wells up. I hold the wound over the teacup.

The flow of blood is slow, the cut not quite big enough.

A clock ticks above the counter behind us. A slow tick-tock that churns up dark memories and darker urges.

I haven’t been a monster in years, not since I hunted down and claimed the Darkland shadow. Sometimes, what I was before, the things I did, it all feels like a fever dream.

When there’s a finger of blood in the cup, Roc grabs it and quickly slings it back.

He didn’t want it, but I know he needs it.

He slinks down in his chair, eyes closed once he’s swallowed it down.

Our blood is meant only to be drunk when in dire need of stabilizing the monster. It’s meant for emergencies only when nothing else will work.

It was Roc’s blood that helped me through the first phase of claiming the Darkland Shadow. When it fought me at every turn, when it tore at me from the inside, leaving three bloody claw marks over my eye. My monster didn’t like the shadow, and the shadow didn’t like my monster, and the first night, I lay in bed, writhing against their warring, sweating through my clothes while my bones ached.

“Better?” I ask him, returning to the chair across from him.

His eyes snap open and his irises burn bright green. “Better.”

Roc and I have seen each other at our worst. That is the one constant about our relationship. We will never turn away when our darkness shows its stains.

“You can’t stay here,” I tell him. “Peter Pan?—”

“I don’t want to stay here. Neverland’s usefulness has run its course.”

The clock keeps ticking.

“What will you do?”

“I have to go to Darkland.” He looks over at me. “Will you come with?”

“No.”

“Vane.”

“No. I’m not going to Darkland.”

He sits forward, his elbow propped on the table. He’s serious now. He’s rarely serious. Fine lines appear around his eyes as he frowns at me, his shoulders hunched forward. “Something is wrong.”

“No shit.”

“Not the witch. Not that.”

I won’t admit it to him, but he does have me slightly intrigued. “Then what?”

“The Myth Makers.”

“The Lostland Secret Society?”

“Yes.”

I sit up straighter. “Go on.”

“I found a maker’s mark on the back of the fae throne and another on the back of the king’s bed in Everland.”

Roc has been known to exaggerate a tale for the sake of the telling. But we don’t lie about shit as serious as the Seven Isles Secret Societies. We’re a part of one. We both know how serious this shit is.

“And the witch you devoured…”

“She told the Captain that a new myth rules the Council of Seven and that plans are in motion.”

“What kind of plans?”

“I don’t know and she won’t tell me.”

“Of course not.” I drop back into the chair. “This isn’t good.”

“Now you know why I need that hat. I think…” He trails off and glances out the window again when Wendy, Winnie, and Asha appear in the street. They spot us through the glass and make their way over.

Roc lowers his voice, quickens his words. “I think the witch plans to use me. Think about it. The Lornes are dead. The Remaldis are dead. The Darkland line of succession is broken. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Our mother’s line…”

“Yes.”

The door opens and the bell above rings out. Wendy is first through the door, followed by Winnie and Asha.

“Where’s James?” Wendy asks.

“Playing with a kitten,” Roc answers.

“What?” She sounds a little mystified by this news.

Roc looks back at me. We could always speak to each other without using words. We aren’t twins. There are three years between us. But monsters bound by blood can speak any language, even the language of silence.

I get up and turn to Winnie. “I’m going to Darkland.”

“You’re…what?” she says, a bit too quickly, a little high-pitched.

“Roc needs me.”

She looks between me and my brother, then over at Wendy.

“You’ll go too?” She asks her ancestor.

“Yes, of course. I’m not leaving Roc or James.”

Winnie levels her shoulders. The shadow’s power puffs up between us, sensing her digging in her heels. “Then I’m going.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“If I can’t, then Pan will.”

“He can’t stop me either.”

The shadow pulses like an energy field. It likes it when we fight because our fighting is always quickly followed by our fucking. And when we are together, no air, no space between us, the shadow is truly whole.

Wendy slips between us, her back to Winnie. It’s been ages since I saw her last, but nothing has changed about her. Same dark hair, same big, round eyes. When Pan brought her to Neverland, she was a docile creature. Frightened by a thunderstorm. Wary of a shadow. There is still some reluctance about her, but I can tell new steel circles her spine.

“I want her to come,” she tells me.

“You don’t get a say,” I remind her.

Winnie presses closer so that I’m now cornered by two Darling women. If one wasn’t enough…

“I’m going.” Winnie crosses her arms over her chest. Behind me, Roc laughs.

“You must know by now, brother, that it’s a futile endeavor, arguing with a Darling.”

The Neverland Shadow seems to echo this. I can feel it laughing at me. That fucker.

“Fine,” I say, and Winnie’s shoulders fall with relief. “But you follow my orders. You do not wander around on your own. And did I mention you will obey me?”

She angles a hip toward me as the shadow’s energy dances. “Of course, Dark One. I will obey every word.” She smiles innocently up at me.

Roc snorts. “We’ve no time for that. You two have bags to pack and I have a Captain to find.”

“Asha and I will help,” Wendy says.

“We’ll meet back at the dock in an hour?” Roc asks me.

“Make it two. I’ll have some convincing to do with Pan.”

Roc nods. “I don’t envy you that, little brother.” Then he slaps me on the back and disappears out the back door with Wendy and Asha in tow.