Chapter 16
I’m paralyzed, my hands clutching the door handle for support, my knees digging into the dirt as I kneel, refusing to turn around.
Something moves behind me, something with padded feet and a growl that reverberates in my very bones.
The shadows are crying out, though whether they want me to face them or run, I can no longer tell. Their grief is so devastating, it pierces through my chest. I can’t breathe, much less move.
The woman shrieks again. Her agony rips through me, conjuring the beginnings of a scream on my lips.
A hand wraps around my mouth, pressing a palm to my lips. Faintly, I taste something that reminds me of plucking honeysuckles from the hedges at the manor garden.
“Dangerous here at night,” Peter whispers into my ear as, quietly, he pulls me into his arms, forcing me to rest my weight not upon the door, but upon his heaving chest.
And then he turns us around.
“See?”
My eyes go wide, my breathing ragged as my sense of the present returns to me. The shadows drain from the edges of my vision.
And then I see it.
The feline creature stalks us in the moonlight, its silky black coat glossy and tantalizing. Fangs protrude from its ebony lips, dripping venom into the earth beneath.
Nightstalker.
Dreamwalker.
“What do you say, Wendy Darling? Would you like for me to hand you over to it? Were you looking for a quick end when you snuck up here, away from my protection?”
Fear seizes me, but this time it doesn’t paralyze me. I shake my head softly underneath his grip.
“You have to remember to look behind you, Wendy Darling. You can’t ignore what might be stalking you from your blind spot. Do you understand?”
I swallow and nod.
“Good,” Peter says, and I can feel the way his lips curl into a treacherous smile, the tips of them grazing my ear.
And then Peter moves.
It’s so fluid, I wonder if he morphs into shadows to pass through my petrified body before materializing in front of me. Long, leathery wings stretch out behind him.
The feline creature whimpers, ever so slightly, as it realizes what a large foe it’s come across, but it digs its haunches in, nonetheless.
It pounces, its lithe body cutting through the air, but Peter is faster. He jumps, his wings spreading out above him, obscuring the night’s moon as he flies above the creature, digging his fingers into the nape of its neck and plucking it from the air, mid-pounce.
With the grace of a panther, he slams it to the ground, landing atop its exposed belly, his boot against its throat as it writhes.
Peter shifts his weight, and something crunches.
I watch as the feline struggles for breath, but it’s too late. Its throat is already crushed beneath Peter’s boot. Slowly, the writhing of its limbs turns to twitching, until before us the petrifying creature lies dead.
“Wendy Darling,” says Peter, eyes like coal as he turns toward me and extends his hand. “That bordered upon unpleasant. I’d rather you not make me do that again.”
The flightback to the tree is more terrifying than the ascent.
It’s the sensation when your body finally catches up to the fact that it was almost severed from your soul. The anger and betrayal it harbors toward your mind for carelessly placing it in harm’s way.
Of course, then there’s the fact that I’m back in the arms of the Shadow Keeper. And that’s dangerous in and of itself.
If Peter is angry, he doesn’t show it. Really, he hardly shows anything except for a mild disdain for my foolish actions. He says nothing the entire flight back. It’s not as if I have anything to say either.
I think it’s fairly obvious what I was attempting. No need to address it, except to say, “John didn’t know what I was planning to do.”
“That much is obvious, or he would have been at your side.”
Something twists in my belly. That my brother’s loyalty to me is so obvious to even a creature as unattached as the Shadow Keeper.
When we reach the reaping tree, Peter lands, then gestures for me to go on ahead. Once the roots deposit me in the Den, I try to scamper away, but Peter is right behind me. Before I can escape down the hall, he sidles in front of me, blocking my path.
“Why did you try to escape?”
I shuffle on my feet. “Because I don’t like being kept a prisoner.”
Peter cranes his head to the side. “You don’t?”
I bristle. “Of course I don’t. Who would?”
A knowing look concentrates Peter’s features as he crosses his arms. His eyes are back to blue now. I suppose he wasn’t in his shadow form sufficient time for the effects to linger long. “Explain to me why you don’t want to be my prisoner, Wendy Darling.”
“Because I’m not free. Because my brothers aren’t free.”
“Free to do what?”
“Free to…” I stop, something catching in my throat.
Peter advances, though he doesn’t touch me. Instead, he examines me with those glinting blue eyes of his. “What is it you’d so love to do out there that you can’t do here?”
“That’s not the point. The point is that I can’t leave.”
“Where can’t you leave? This island? Neverland? Your manor? Estelle? Or…” He places his thumb on my temple and caresses it. “Is it here you long to escape?”
I swallow, wrapping my arms around my waist and turning away, brushing aside his touch as if that will sweep away the thorns his words leave behind.
“Getting off this island won’t free you from what’s lurking in your own head.”
A lump rises in my throat. “You have no idea what’s in my head.”
Peter raises an amused brow. “Is that so? Tell me, what was it that had you so paralyzed by the warehouse that you couldn’t even support your own weight? What had a woman fearless enough to climb a cliffside with bare feet keeled over with terror? It wasn’t the nightstalker. You didn’t even know it was there when I arrived. So tell me, I insist, what makes you believe I’m the one imprisoning you?”
I blink away tears, and though anger rises in my throat, I can’t form the words to answer.
“Goodnight, Wendy Darling,” says Peter, before disappearing into the shadows.
Faintly, in the edges of my memory, I remember a voice caressing me from the chaise in my bedroom.
I could take away your pain.
I don’t go backto my room. Not yet. Not when I’m barely holding back sobs. I don’t know if it’s the aftermath of my adrenal response to almost being ripped to shreds, or if it’s the dread of having my memories slip away from me. The eerie anticipation of what Peter might make me into once there’s nothing left of my mother’s careful warnings, once the little bit of myself I managed to tuck away, to salvage during my upbringing, is gone. Will I forget that John and Michael are my brothers? Peter wasn’t keen on bringing them to Neverland. It could very well be that if I forget they exist, he could dispose of them without worrying about me giving him trouble over it. Our deal was that he would bring them to Neverland, not that he would allow them to stay forever.
Of course, I suppose if Peter wanted me to forget, he could make good on the bargain I offered him.
Anything. A blank check, for him to use as he pleases. Absentmindedly, I run my thumb over the silvery ovals that mark the crease of my inner right elbow.
I suppose if he hasn’t used it to wipe my memories, it’s only because he has something more strategic in mind. Or perhaps because the island will do the memory-wiping for him.
“Winds?” someone asks from the doorway to the Den. I look up to find Freckles standing there, shuffling between his feet awkwardly.
I’m not sure when the Lost Boys convened and decided to call me Winds. Maybe I’m just sensitive right now because I feel my memories, my control, slipping like oil through my fingertips, but I snap, “That’s not my name.”
His eyes widen, and guilt instantly pierces my chest.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
I sigh, wiping tears from my cheek, embarrassed by my outburst. “I know. I’m sorry. You can call me Winds,” I say, remembering how I didn’t mind when Simon said it only a few hours ago.
Freckles actually smiles at that, and my chest cracks open a little bit. He’s tended to be a tad prickly in my estimation, but there’s a softness in his cheeks I haven’t noticed until now.
“Are you missing home?” he asks, approaching me like one might a stray kitten hiding in a gutter.
My throat bobs, stinging. I don’t know how to answer that question, so I don’t. “It’s not that, so much as I don’t like the idea of—” Propriety stops me. Freckles probably doesn’t want to hear me complaining about the potential of losing my memories when he’s already lost his.
“You’re afraid of what the island might do to your head, aren’t you?” Light from the dwindling fire in the hearth dances across the smattering of freckles on his nose and cheeks.
Hindered from replying by the throbbing pain in my throat, I nod, clutching my knees to my chest I huddle against the wall.
Freckles pivots back and forth on his feet for a moment, then holds out a finger. “Wait here,” he says, before scrambling off.
He returns a few minutes later with his hand behind his back. When he sits cross-legged on the floor in front of me, he whips the hidden object out and presses it into my hands.
The wrapping is hasty at best, a broad leaf bent around the object’s edges and secured with twine. When I open it, out falls a leather journal.
“Peter got it for me on one of his missions to the outside realms,” says Freckles, undoing the leather strap and opening the journal for me. When he notices me staring at the rough edges on the inner spine where it’s obvious several pages have been ripped out, he blushes. “I thought maybe if I had a pen in my hand, wrote stream-of-consciousness-like, the memories might come back to me. They never did. But hey—you still have your memories,” he says, flicking me in the temple. He must instantly regret it, because he offers me a wince and tucks his hands back into his lap. “This way, even if you forget, you’ll have a record of your life before that you can always go back to.”
When I let out another choked sob, horror fills Freckles’s face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I launch myself over to him and wrap him up in a hug, my face settling into his coarse red hair.
“Oh,” he says, chuckling nervously as he pats me flat-palmed on the back.
Freckles findsme a quill and ink before he returns to bed, leaving me curled up with the journal. I fill the first ten pages with every detail I think I might need if I wake up tomorrow with my memory wiped. It’s mostly simple things: my name, that John and Michael are my brothers, that my parents died at the hands of a man named Captain Astor, but my scribbling soon turns to Peter, and once I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop.
Every detail I include has a single purpose, which I underline and circle once my eyes start to droop with weariness.
Peter is dangerous.
As I finally crawl into bed, I clutch the journal to my chest, too afraid to set it out of sight, lest I forget that it exists tomorrow.
When I wakethe next morning, my memories remain.
It’s Michael who’s gone.