30. Never
As I stood on the beach on the far side of the island with my trusty dagger in my hand, I was seriously questioning my logic.
Hook had flashed me here with a disgruntled look on his handsome face. The thing was, as vocal as he’d been about how much he didn’t like this part of the plan, the man said precisely four words before giving me a look I felt all the way to my toes and flashing away.
Don’t do anything stupid.
Yeah, I was a little offended? It wasn’t like I ever set out to do the stupid thing. Sometimes shit just happened. But what if he was right to be worried? Not about me being stupid, but about how risky it was coming here.
Worst-case scenario: I would fail and die. And Leo would die. And Hook would fail, only he wouldn’t die.
I would be the first to admit that outcome would suck. Don’t get me wrong, Death by Pixie would be a hell of a phrase to have on my tombstone. But would I have a tombstone?
If I died here today, my brother would never know.
That thought hurt. Way down deep. If the tables were turned, I would want to know. It would tear my heart into little pieces of bloody confetti, but knowing that he was dead would be a hell of a lot better than spending a lifetime imagining what might have happened.
“So, Plan A, obviously, is to stay alive,” I said to myself.
In terms of pep talks, it left a lot to be desired.
I scanned the stretch of dark sand again. Everything about this side of the island was darker. The sand, the water, the trees. Not to mention the shadows lurking beneath those trees. It all made my skin crawl.
Rolling my shoulders back, I eyed the jungle. “Quit stalling,” I said aloud, forcing myself to take one step toward the darkness that seemed to swallow the ground. “There’s always the chance the pixie won’t show.”
In which case, I would end up hanging out in the jungle, by my lonesome, while Hook did most of the heavy lifting. My brain headed down the path of what might happen to him if he wasn’t able to get his hands on Petra, or how many things could go wrong even if he managed to put her in that makeshift cage, before I shut down that dismal train of thought.
Mostly.
I was trying to keep a positive outlook, really I was, but that cage was a fucking joke. He’d said the wood was enchanted. Which, yay, I guess. That didn’t change the fact that it was still a glorified crate meant to hold a demon that could bat me around like a badminton shuttlecock.
“But hey, what do I know?” I muttered.
It’s not like I’m an expert on all things magical.That was the thought that followed me into the shadows. The minute I couldn’t feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, every short hair along the back of my neck rose to attention, and all my senses tried to kick into high gear at once.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I called out with a fuck ton of false confidence, sending a handful of colorful birds squawking into flight.
Was it smart to taunt anything on this island? Probably not, but why wait for something to happen when I could be the bad bitch making it happen?
I was the shark in this situation.
I was the hunter.
Never mind that it was even warmer in the shade of the jungle. The humid air was thicker in here. Heavier. It had my clothes clinging to my skin and a fine sheen of sweat already forming on my forehead.
“Come on, Anya,” I called again, pitching my voice loud and clear into those eerie shadows. “Let’s play a game.”
I drew in a steadying breath, winced at the sickly sweet scent of decay, and double-checked my sketchy as fuck internal walls to make sure the uncertainty coursing through me wasn’t leaking out.
If Hook could have sensed what I was feeling, he probably would have flashed right back. And if he could have heard me? He would’ve had his big hand wrapped around my mouth in a heartbeat.
Luckily, he wasn’t there to silence me with his overbearing protectiveness. A protectiveness I would never publicly admit I found kind of hot.
Okay, all kinds of hot.
A flutter of movement pulled my attention to the branches of a twisted tree. At first glance, it looked ancient and alien. That was before I realized it was just a tree that had been dead long enough that the bark had all peeled away, leaving behind a ghostly pale skeleton. The mass of deep green vines hanging from every limb might have played a role in its demise, but even if it didn’t, the creeping, crawling plant had certainly taken advantage of the countless knots and tortured angles.
And there, perched in the heart of that dead tree, sat my nemesis. She glared at me with an intensity that sent a renewed rush of adrenaline through me.
“Well, hello, pixie,” I said, sounding a hell of a lot more confident than I felt.
Sure, she might be the size of a softball at that moment, but we’d done this dance before. I knew it would only take a matter of seconds for her to match my height and then some.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” she said flatly.
I stretched my arms to my sides and offered her a shallow bow without taking my eyes off her. “Sorry to disappoint.”
She flitted from one branch to the next, then to another, inching her way forward. If she was trying to be subtle about closing the distance between us, she was failing miserably.
“Why are you here?” she hissed. “Alone? Has your precious captain had enough of you already?” The question was laced with venom. “He really can be so fickle.”
“I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” I said. “I mean, I can’t even imagine how you must be feeling right now.”
Her turquoise eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
A false smile crept up my face. “Hook, of course. You know he has his power back, right?”
If looks could kill…
“Yeah, you know. That’s gotta suck after all the trouble you went to all those years ago to steal that little piece of him.” I held up a hand. “How did you manage it, by the way? I’ve heard his side of the story, but I still don’t see how a worthless little flying bug could lure a demigod into a trap like that. Someone helped you, right? I mean, there’s no way you’re smart enough—”
She launched off the branch at a frightening speed, and I barely had time to lunge out of the way before she sailed past. Whipping around, I was greeted by a full-grown sneering woman.
“Stupid girl. That pendant was mine. He was mine,” she said, rushing forward in a flash of glittering dust, driving me backward until I stumbled and hit the ground hard.
My head bounced off the dirt with a stomach twisting thump. Stars exploded in my vision. Distantly, as I blinked at the world wobbling before me, I realized I’d dropped my blade.
Mother fucker.
I pulled myself back to my feet in record time, but it wasn’t until I was standing that I realized the glitter bitch was waiting for me.
All part of the plan, Nev, I reminded myself as she slammed into me again.
This time, I was ready for her. Using her momentum, I took us both to the ground, holding on tight to the fragile fabric of her ridiculous dress as I rolled to my back and shoved, sending her flying over me.
I scrambled around on all fours like an angry cat, crouched and ready to pounce. A glint of metal shining beneath a bush a few feet away caught my attention, but a quick glance was all it took to see the dagger was a lost cause. At least for this fight. The four-inch spikes sticking out every which way from the bush’s reaching branches would have made mincemeat out of me.
Unfortunately, that moment of distraction cost me. Anya was on me in a second, driving me to my knees with weight as her arm wrapped around my throat from behind. I bucked as hard as I could, but I could barely get any leverage.
Damn, she’s stronger than I remember.The air around us swirled like crazy. Where the hell is that wind coming from? There hadn’t been so much as a light breeze when I’d stepped into the darkness.
It took me another beat to realize her wings were beating like crazy. She was using them and her body weight to hold me down as she tried to choke the life out of me. Her grip on my throat tightened, and her tinkling laugh in my ear sent my pulse through the roof.
No fucking way was I going down that easy.
I reared up as hard as I could, clutching at her arm as I twisted, rolling us both into the dirt and pinning her beneath me. It was enough to break her hold, but I was still at a disadvantage with my back to her. I rolled off, twisted, and stood in what felt like one incredibly graceful move, especially for me.
See, I can do this. I just have to keep her busy long enough to give Hook time to get to Petra.
However long that might take.
Anya let out a war cry as she shot up into the air, whipping through the canopy and leaving a shower of shredded leaves falling to the ground in her wake.
Uh oh.That wasn’t part of my plan.
I spun in a circle, caught between crouching and searching the trees above me for an incoming turquoise missile. I whipped around just in time to see her evil sneer before she slammed into me again.
It felt like getting clipped by a truck. The force of the blow made my shoulder scream as it spun me around, but I managed to stay on my feet. Until another one of those cries split the air and she crashed into my back, sending me sprawling.
Fuck, that hurt.
I dragged myself up as fast as I could, ignoring my scraped palms and the dozen or so bruises forming all over my body. I turned slowly, dragging air into my raw lungs as my pulse pounding in my ears all but deafened me.
Where the fuck did she go?And why wasn’t I smart enough to bring a backup weapon?
I heard a hum from my left and ducked. She sailed overhead with an angry shriek. The next time, she came at me from the back. I didn’t move fast enough. Damp dirt clung to my clothes and my hair, but I didn’t let her get a grip on me.
She was stronger when she could use those wings of hers to pin to something, so that was the thing to avoid.
With every pass, I was getting better at dodging her. Sometimes I could hear her coming, sometimes I couldn’t. But when I couldn’t dodge her, the trick was to keep twisting and writhing until I was back on my feet.
Not going to lie, it was fucking exhausting. And twice, she caught me as I was still dragging myself up off the ground, driving me right back down.
But I wasn’t about to give up and release the hold I had on my emotions. I didn’t have to win this fight. I just had to hold out long enough for him to get his part of the job done.
Awareness tingled up my spine an instant before Anya smashed into me again. Only this time, I was airborne. We probably only flew backward for a second or two, but it felt like an eternity.
At least until that flight came to an abrupt end with a brilliant shock of pain exploding through my back and chest. My feet hit the ground with a jarring thunk, but I didn’t fall.
How the hell am I still standing?
My next ragged breath was torture to draw, and I coughed it right back out, along with a warm, coppery wetness that coated my tongue and dripped from the corner of my mouth.
Uh oh.
I pressed my shaky fingers to my lips and pulled them away, staring in disbelief at the red staining my skin.
Danger, Will Robinson.
Anya’s cackle registered somewhere in the swirling, panicked mess of my mind, but it faded away when I got a look at what was going on beyond the blood on my hand.
Was that… I tried to move. Pain ricocheted inside me, shooting from my chest to my fingers and toes, and back again.
Sure enough, one of the gnarled tree branches was sticking out the right side of my chest.
Well, shit.I meant to let my head fall back against the tree’s trunk, only it didn’t have anything to fall back against. I was just hanging out, dangling from a dead tree limb, doing my best imitation of a marshmallow on the end of a skewer.
And damn, did it hurt.
It wasn’t the same kind of pain I’d felt fighting off Petra’s shadow, but it was up there in terms of intensity. It blurred my vision and made it hard to focus. Anya was saying something, her taunting tone coming through loud and clear, even if my brain refused to process her words.
I really couldn’t make sense of much, but I was present enough to realize I needed to keep my goddamned walls up. If Hook caught wind of what was going on, he would drop what he was doing.
Not happening.
He needed to take care of Petra so my brother would be safe.
I coughed again, spitting up more blood, and biting back a whimper when the movement sent another shock of agony through me. Even a mush-minded idiot like me knew coughing up blood meant bad things for my future.
And from the way the pain was fading, that future wouldn’t last too much longer.
Which left me with only one real choice to make: I could hang out and die as the world’s worst tree ornament, whining about how much it hurt, or I could at least try to fight.
Dragging my clumsy feet beneath me, I clutched the end of the blood-soaked branch sticking out from my chest.
“I choose violence,” I croaked.
I had enough time to think this was exactly the kind of stupid thing Hook had told me not to do before I pushed with my feet and pulled with my hands, dragging myself forward.
“Fuuuuuck!” Black spots didn’t just dot my vision, they flooded it. Fire licked through my chest, racing down my spine, making my feet and legs tingle madly.
One more push. That’s all I need.
I blocked out Anya’s voice—it wasn’t like I was listening to her bullshit anyway—and psyched myself up to try again. All I had to do was keep her busy, and the best way to keep her busy was to keep fucking moving.
With another scream that shredded my throat and sent a spray of pink into the air, I shoved forward again, clearing the end of the branch before collapsing to the ground in a breathless heap.
Predictably, Anya was there, hovering over me with a sick, satisfied grin on her flawless face.
I’d claimed to hate a lot of things in my life. Demons, my mom, my twisted family history, social media, drivers who couldn’t figure out how a fucking turn signal worked… It was a pretty long list. But I could honestly say I’d never hated anything as much as I hated her at that moment.