Stalking Wendy Darling

Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

HOOK

JUST OFF SWORDFISH ISLE

“ Y ou’re signing your own death warrant,” I muttered, glaring across the stern of the ship at the glossy black schooner that had stalked us from the edge of Alabaster to this black stretch of water framed by a chain of abandoned islands. The perfect place to wreck a ship with no witnesses.

“Sterling,” I barked, the tall man falling over himself to reach my side. The crew had always had a healthy wariness of me, had never wanted to test my orders and earn my wrath, but these past weeks had taught them true fear. None would meet my eye, not even insubordinate Vea these days. Something had snapped in me, a line crossed with Wendy’s death, and while I’d always been a nightmare and terror to the residents of the Chain of Saints, my crew had enjoyed a sort of immunity.

That immunity was dead, much like anyone who so much as glanced at me wrong. My temper was a tripwire, but that was easier to face than the nights, the quiet. The people—friend, foe, innocent—I killed were easier to think about than what filled my mind alone at night. I was glad for the schooner stalking us. I needed a distraction, needed the destruction.

I dragged a slow breath of salt air into my lungs, cooling my airways even if it didn’t cool my head.

“Yes, captain,” Sterling said with careful deference.

“Get the cannons ready. Wait until the ship’s almost alongside us and then disable its rudder. I want as much of it intact as possible.”

“We’re scavenging,” he realised with a grin.

I nodded tightly. A ship like that could be stripped, its parts sold. It was the people I was more interested in, how they would scream and cry and bleed and beg. My heart quickened, a beat of desperation. I needed it. I needed to feel bodies break under my bare hand so I didn’t think about the way her body must have broken when the god devoured her.

I should have moved faster across the deck. I should have got to her before that fucking monster took her from me. If I’d run a few seconds earlier, could I have saved her?

I couldn’t get the vision of her eyes locked on mine, so bright with enjoyment and thrill and life out of my head. She was haunting me. Tormenting me. And I deserved it.

I barely noticed when Sterling ran off to obey my orders, getting our weapons ready. I sensed Anton draw nearer, anticipating his own orders as the schooner came closer, closer. Just to fuck with him, I said nothing, gave no orders, and watched him shift his weight. If he spoke first, I might rip his head off his body, or maybe I’d tear out his throat with my teeth. I ran my tongue along sharp canines. They’d been that way for a week now, like my voice was a roughened growl, my eyes full black. The monster was taking over. If I’d run faster, moved sooner…

“How close should we allow it?” Anton asked finally, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over the hush and murmur of the ocean. The seas were calm, like even the water didn’t dare draw my attention.

“Closer.”

“Captain, they could fire on us.”

I snorted. “Not with those weapons.”

Tiny pathetic gunports. Against the Banshee, the schooner would be like a baby trying to win a knife fight.

“What are your orders, captain?” Anton asked tentatively, hands clasped behind his back even though the vulnerable position had to be screaming at him.

“Stay far away.”

He seemed to relax a fraction. “That’s wise, captain. Letting the schooner get any closer—”

“From. Me,” I corrected in a voice frozen with rage. My head was full of screaming, my body wracked with tension keeping me still. On the inside, I thrashed and fought and railed. I wanted to destroy everything on sight. I wanted my Wendy back.

I struggled to see anything remotely attractive about staying in this world without the woman who made me feel something after twenty years. She forced me out of the ice and numbness that had surrounded me for decades. She forced me back to life, or perhaps showed me life for the first time in my existence. And then ripped it all away.

Anton took a step back, a catch in his breath. I remained preternaturally still, watching the schooner cut through the calm sea towards us, my heart beating an erratic rhythm of fury. It had been that way since the monster devoured her. Irregular and fast. Manic.

Anton backed away and stalked to the railing. I heard him mutter that I’d get them all killed but the screams were so loud inside my head that his words had no impact. Maybe I wanted to obliterate us all. Or maybe I just wanted to feel something rip into me again, the way Wendy’s bright eyes and wicked smirk had. Maybe I wanted it to hurt.

“They’re close enough to board, captain!” someone shouted. Maceo maybe. I didn’t care who.

“So shoot them,” Anton yelled.

A corner of my mouth twitched into something too dead to be a smile. I turned slowly, scanning the melee on deck, hunting until I found my quartermaster. He froze, staring at me as I watched him with unwavering eyes. His throat bobbed in a gulp. My smile twitched, growing, as harmful and severing as a knife. I tilted my head slowly, not taking my eyes off him, and he scrambled away, the whites of his eyes showing as he moved out of my line of sight.

That, there. The rush of satisfaction, the bright burst of colour and smugness inside me. That was what I was searching for. Part of me hated Wendy for waking it up, for showing the yawning emptiness I’d harboured for years. I wanted the emptiness back.

“Ready,” Rolando roared, and one look at the schooner showed why. Figures were lined up along the edge of the ship with ropes in hand, ready to board the ship. My erratic heartbeat quickened, thrumming in the side of my neck. They were ready to cut their throats on my blades, ready to beg and plead for mercy, ready to gasp and run and scream. My own blood sang with it. This was the only thing left that made me feel alive.

“Aim!” Rolando yelled.

I felt the charge through my own blood, sizzling, burning. Not quite alive, not quite dead.

A gunshot rang out so abruptly that my heart jolted inside its cage, and I snapped my head around to stare as Rolando fell back with a cry, stumbling into the main mast. Joanna stood behind him, smoke caressing the barrel of the pistol she’d discharged, blasting a hole through his shoulder. Another little thrill went through me. I didn’t care where the violence came from, only that it filled the emptiness inside me. A smile pulled at my mouth, baring teeth.

“What are you doing?” Ramone demanded, storming across the deck towards Joanna until she lifted her gun and aimed it right at his throat.

“Look,” she hissed. But her eyes searched the ship until they found mine, bright with an insanity I knew I wore too. “Look.”

My head was turning towards the schooner, confusion making me angry. Look at what? I only turned my face halfway before boots slammed into the polished mahogany of the deck, a lithe figure landing a few feet away from me. The landing was solid enough to tell me it wasn’t the first time he’d made a jump like that. I was already reaching for my knife, ready to carve his skin until bone gleamed, but my hand froze, breathing froze, entire being froze, when the man clutched his ribs and hissed, “Motherfucker!”

“Where the hell have you been?” Joanna shrieked, sprinting across the deck.

I dragged my stare up from the newcomer’s boots, slowly, painfully, terrified to be wrong. Hope was barbed with spikes that dug into my chest, my lungs, my heart. My panicked stare travelled up legs that buckled, to a waist hung with knives and a pistol, up to a chest draped in a worn leather jacket far too big for her. My throat closed up. I knew that body. Had spent weeks obsessing over it when she was alive, and weeks since remembering every last detail about her.

“Long story,” that voice hissed again, rough with pain. My eyes shot up the last bit of distance as she grabbed for the deck to steady herself. My heart stopped at her face, that face, the face I’d tortured myself with.

My feet jerked forward a step, a sound clawing up my throat, panic and hope and disbelief ripping apart my chest. But it was her face, it was Wendy’s face, and that was her voice snarling in pain, her nostrils flaring, her jaw clenching, her lithe fingers digging into the wooden railing until her knuckles turned white.

“On reflection,” she panted, looking at me, her eyes carrying out the same appraisal of me as I’d made of her, “I shouldn’t have made such a grand entrance.”

“We thought you were dead!” Joanna snapped, finally reaching us. The crew closed around us too, curious and murmuring, eyeing Wendy like a ghost had boarded the Banshee.

We all jumped when cannon fire shattered the silence that hung over the ship after Joanna’s words. Shit.

“Go tell Sterling to hold his fire,” I ground out, flashing a glare at the closest person—Maceo. He scurried away, disappearing belowdecks. Wendy raised her eyebrows from his rapid retreat to me, scanning my face, a knot forming between her brows.

“I’m alive,” she said with a little flourish of her hand, the other gripping a bag thrown over her shoulder. “Surprise!”

So many emotions assaulted me at once. My body froze, torn between a dozen different reactions. Joanna lunged closer and carried out one of those actions, driving her fist into Wendy’s shoulder.

“We thought you were dead, bitch.”

All the colour drained from Wendy’s face and she lurched to the side. Her hand shot up to the place her sister had punched her.

“Shit,” Joanna breathed. “Are you hurt?”

“Move,” I ordered softly, my head full of screaming, my body so still that it felt unnatural to take a step. Joanna sighed and retreated a step, then two, but no more.

“Who hurt you?” I asked in that quiet voice, my heart drumming so loudly it drowned out the ocean, drowned out the mutterings of the crew.

Wendy straightened, masking the pain we’d all seen as she stood tall, giving me a smile that made her eyes glitter. A stake drove right through my heart. She was dead. She was here. She was smiling at me. I couldn’t breathe.

“I brought you a gift,” she said, holding my stare, searching my eyes as her own tilted up, her lips echoing the movement in a smile. She slung the bag off her shoulder and reached into it, drawing out a lump of greyed flesh. I only realised it was a head when I saw her gripping the dark hair, and then my heart skipped.

Do you even love someone if you don’t give them the decapitated heads of the people they hate?

The muttering among the crew grew louder. Whose head was it? I heard the question repeated over and over. Whose? Whose head?

Wendy took a very careful step closer, and my calm exploded when I realised she wasn’t being careful of my temper. She was being careful of her own injuries. Someone had hurt my Wendy. I sucked in a sharp breath through my nose.

“Who hurt you, Wendalyn?”

“No one who’s left alive.” She held up the severed head and gave it a little wave. “Do you like my gift?”

It was at that moment I recognised the fold of skin above the corpse’s eyes, then the sagging cheeks, the lips now blue but once smirking and cruel, amused at my pain, laughing when I screamed for it to stop.

I staggered back a step, another stake driven through my heart. “You… How…?”

She shrugged and immediately bit the inside of her lip, the reminder of her pain like a red rag to my bull. “Used some of Sterling’s grenades to blast my way out of the monster, then washed up on this asshole’s island.” She shook his head again, her disrespect of the dead making me almost smile.

“Wendy,” I breathed, locking down my body as it threatened to shake. Too many feelings all at once, too many memories, good and bad and everything in between. It overloaded me. Overwhelmed me. My knees weakened, barely holding me upright.

She didn’t look away from me, edging closer. “I thought you could spike it on the front of the ship as a warning. Or we could burn it like I burned his fortress.”

That truth kicked me in the gut. My eyes stung. “You burned it?”

“Of course I did. Me and my new friends killed everyone there and burned the place down. There’s nothing left.”

“You—” My throat closed up. I could not, would not, fucking, cry. Not in front of the crew.

“They hurt my captain,” Wendy said quietly, bridging the space between us until only a step remained. Her eyes were as bright as an electrical storm, shining with something that looked a lot like happiness even though she was in pain. “No one’s allowed to hurt my captain and live.”

My knees finally buckled and I allowed it to happen, kneeling at her feet, my brow pressed to her thighs.

“Alright, show’s over,” Vea yelled. “Don’t you bastards have jobs to do?”

I laughed, but the sound caught in my throat, dangerously close to a sob. “I want to burn the head,” I said, my throat full of shards of glass, cutting my voice to shreds. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” A broken laugh escaped me at the way she shoved Eldrick’s head back into the bag and dumped it on the deck next to the mast. “Why? You got plans for me tonight?”

My laugh was twisted, ruined like every other part of me. “So many plans, Wendy Darling.”

Her eyes shone when I looked up at her, making no attempt to rise from where I knelt before her. I would kneel all night if it made her happy.

“Wendy,” I rasped, conscious of activity all around us, the two of us still in the centre of all that movement. Her fingers stroked along my jaw, so gentle that my heart seized in my chest. “If you pull a stunt like that again, if you make me believe you’re dead, I’ll kill you myself.”

She sighed, her eyes closing. “Oh, I missed this.”

“Me threatening to kill you?”

Her smile settled deeper into her cheeks. Her hands found my shoulders, pulling me to my feet until her head tipped back so she could meet my eyes. “All of it,” she replied.

My whole world narrowed to the way her thumbs skated across my shoulders, a caress that stabbed deep. I angled my head towards the stairs in a silent order, trying to look at every part of her, to see everything she hid beneath too-big clothes and a wicked smile.

I didn’t let even a shadow slip between us as she followed my silent command, striding across the deck like she owned it. My heart swelled painfully, threatening to explode like a grenade.

I watched her descend into the belly of the Banshee, assessed the way she shifted her weight, carrying herself with a delicateness I hadn’t witnessed from her even with a gunshot wound in her shoulder.

She froze halfway down the hallway to my room. Our room. I halted with her, watching her like a hawk as she peered over her shoulder at me. “Did you just growl at me?”

“Inside the cabin,” I ordered, my control rapidly slipping its leash, letting the storm of emotion out where I couldn’t hide it. “Now, Wendy.”

She defied me, because of course she did, rolling onto her tiptoes and masking her pain as she kissed a spot under my jaw. Sharp, prickling sensation swept through my body, shuddering down my spine.

Not yet. I wouldn’t lose control until I saw what she was hiding from me.

I trembled when she finally opened the door to the cabin. I knew her inside out, knew every movement of her body by heart. Pain wrote itself across every muscle and line of her. And that was why I would not lose control.

Someone had hurt my woman. It wasn’t enough that they were dead. The entire world would pay for this.

“Show me,” I ordered, closing the door softly behind us.

Her sigh stripped all the armour from her, her shoulders tightening, jaw clenching with pain, nostrils flaring. It was a beautiful thing to see her trust, but I’d have loved it under any other circumstance.

“Are you bleeding?” I asked, striding to the basin in the corner, already wetting a cloth.

“Just… in a few places.” Her reply was tentative and small. My chest pulled tight.

She hovered in the middle of the room, her fingers knotted in front of her. In the loose clothes she wore, there was no sign of injury.

“Take this off, darling,” I said, my voice softening unconsciously as I closed the distance between us. The watery light coming through the window was unforgiving; I spotted a bruise on her neck that made me see red.

Wendy’s jaw clenched, and I sensed her argument, her instinct to hide any weakness.

“Let me take care of you,” I pleaded, barely louder than a whisper. “Wendy. Please.”

Surprise brightened her eyes, followed by understanding. “It’s not pretty.”

My hand clenched around the cloth, sending drips of water to the floor. I took a tight breath. “Show me.”

She wet her lips, scraping her teeth across her bottom lip, and shrugged out of the jacket, pulling the loose shirt beneath over her head too quickly. Tears sprang to her eyes, her breath catching and freezing, and she curled into herself as the shirt fell to the floor. I caught the back of her head, lowering my face to kiss her crown, dragging the scent of her into my lungs. Familiar warm honey and wine and floral musk, but sharpened by an astringent scent that enraged me. Someone had hurt her. My woman. My Wendy.

“Remember when you accused me of being a witch because I’d bewitched you?” she asked, her voice rough with emotion. I drew back an inch to wipe the tears from her cheeks, getting lost in those stormy eyes. “I think you must be one, too.”

My thumb skimmed her cheek of its own accord. “Remember when you said bringing me the heads of my enemies would be a declaration of love?”

“I meant it.” Her lips curled slightly. “I’ve met a lot of people, Kingston. None like you. I’m afraid I might be obsessed with you.”

My heart seized. “The feeling is mutual, darling.” I bowed my head again, dragging more of her scent into my lungs. “It killed me when I thought I’d lost you.”

“I would have come back sooner, but…” She waved a hand down her body and something inside me froze at the reminder she was injured. No. When I drew back, staring at the welts across her chest, the circular burns down her stomach, and across her side, there was no way the word injury could apply to this.

“Turn around,” I croaked, my heart collapsing when she did, when I saw all of it, all of her. She bled from ten different places, others pulsing with raw burns. I knew exactly how painful they were.

She’d been tortured. I blinked fast when she faced me again, her arms very carefully coming up to rest on my shoulders. “I’ll be fine. I’m a tough girl.”

My laugh was twisted. “You might be tough enough to endure this, Wendy, but I’m not. I can’t stand it.”

She pulled me down at the same time she rose up, kissing me with a softness that made everything inside me hurt. I wanted to drag her closer and kiss her until I couldn’t breathe, but there would be a time for that. Now was not it. I laid a lingering kiss to her temple, pouring every ounce of wrath and fury, love and care into it. Then I forced myself to pull away.

“I have something that can dull the pain, but let’s get you cleaned up first.” Blood trailed down her ribs from the worst wounds, where the prod had burned her in the same place over and over. I bit back nausea, washing away the blood, hating every sharp inhale she took, every whimper she tried to bite off.

She had tears in her eyes by the time I’d covered each welt in lotion and wrapped enough bandages around her chest, stomach, and legs to fill a doctor’s surgery.

“Thank you,” she rasped when I was done, guiding her to the bed. Our bed.

“You slaughtered my enemies and brought me his head. Of course I would tend to your injuries.” I left a kiss on her forehead and moved away before she could pull me down beside her, ignoring her cry of outrage when I strode out of the door to terrorise Ramone into cooking for my woman.

I returned to Wendy ten minutes later with a hastily heated bowl of stew, a loaf of bread, three chunks of cheddar, strips of beef jerky, and a cup of wine. Was it overkill? Yes. Did I give a shit? No.

“I thought you’d abandoned me, asshole,” she huffed when I entered, crossing the room to her.

“Never,” I swore, catching her off guard with another kiss to her temple. “Eat. You need strength for your body to heal.”

She ignored the food for the moment, reaching up to successfully pull me down beside her this time, her lips meeting mine the instant they were within reach. I groaned, the storm inside me howling to be unleashed, but not yet, not while she was hurt.

“I’m keeping you,” she warned me. “I hope you know.”

Her words unwound a tight knot of panic inside me, allowing a sigh to leave me. “You better, because I’m not letting you out of my sight again, Wendalyn.”

“It’s kinda sexy when you call me my full name,” she said with a little grin, reaching for the bowl of stew. “Kinda scary, too.”

“You like me scary,” I pointed out.

Her eyes were still dark with pain but that didn’t stop them glittering. “I like everything about you. Especially the scary parts.”

“I wish you’d never ended up on that island,” I confessed, the words burning my chest, the truth eviscerating me. She’d been there, in that evil place that had hurt me over and over. She’d met the Collector. Eldrick. “I hate that you were hurt.”

“Bodies heal,” she dismissed, biting into the bread.

“Minds don’t,” I said quietly.

Very seriously, she asked, “Have you ever heard of speaking about your problems?”

How she’d prised a laugh from me, I had no idea, but a smile curled my mouth nonetheless. I settled my hand on her knee, the one place I knew was free of injuries. “Heard of it, but I’m not a fan.”

“Tough shit. We both talk about it, we both avoid a horrible meltdown, and then we live happily ever after as pirates. Deal?”

Another laugh. How was she doing this?

“Deal,” I agreed, trying not to obsess over the clothes she wore—mine. She hadn’t fastened the strings of the shirt so it hung open, showing a massive bruise on her breastbone. Very slowly, carefully, I leaned in to kiss that mark and her breath hitched. “When you’re healed, when my shock and relief at having you back has worn off to reveal the fury beneath, I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t walk for a week.”

“Jesus,” she breathed.

“Finish your food, darling,” I said with the hint of a smile, leaning back on my elbows. “You’re going to need all your strength to heal.”

Her eyes were a little blown as she looked at me, biting into a lump of cheese without looking away from me. “How long did it take you to heal? Physically.”

I considered it. “A month. But the worst injuries stuck around for half a year.”

“Half a year! I can’t go half a year without orgasms!”

A snort burst from me. “Better take good care of yourself then,” I replied.

She groaned, her eyes falling shut. “Now I see why everyone calls you a villain. It’s not because you’re a thief, kidnapper, or murderer. It’s because you’re a tease.”

This time the smile overtook my whole face, a laugh rumbling its way through my chest. Fuck, it was good to have her back. And I would never lose her again. I’d obliterate anyone who even tried to remove her from my side.

And knowing my girl, she’d get aroused by the violence.