Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HOOK
I come to a little groggy, my head pounding.
I attempt to lift my hand to rub the blurriness from my eyes and find immediate resistance.
Blinking through the haze, I look down and realize I’m tied to a chair. My hook is gone.
And then it comes back to me—
Someone took me hostage and drugged me in their carriage.
As some of the haze wears off, I scan my surroundings but don’t find much to pick out. The room is dark save for a naked, flickering bulb above me. The floor is cracked stone, dirty and damp. Licking my lips, I taste salty sea air and, somewhere behind me, a sharp breeze.
We must be near the water.
“Good, you’re awake,” someone says as they come around to face me.
There’s a green mask tied around their nose and mouth, obscuring their features. Stitched on the front of the fabric are two snake eyes and a serpent tongue.
Bloody hell.
Gutter Snakes.
I vaguely recall Manuel telling me the Gutter Snakes were trying to bribe several of the workers in the Portage Hall so they could get some of their illegal shipments into the harbor. No one had taken the bait yet, and good on them.
Except now I seem to be paying the price.
The question is…did they take me hostage because I’m the portage minister or because I’m connected to the future King of Darkland?
If it’s the latter, they might be the dumbest criminals to ever walk this island.
Two more men join the first. All three of them are wearing the matching masks of the Gutter Snakes.
The first one is the shortest with a portly middle and a floppy cap on his head.
The man on the left is tall and wiry, wearing a tweed jacket.
The man on the right is stocky, wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“What the bloody hell is this?” I twist at the bindings, but they at least seem to know what they’re doing with rope.
The man on the left, Tweed, whispers to the man in the middle, Shorty. “What happened to his hand?”
“What? How should I know?” Shorty whispers back.
“Did you cut it off?” Plaid asks.
“No!”
“You idiots.”
A fourth voice rings out from the shadows and a woman steps in. She’s wearing no mask, but her hair is tucked up into a newsboy cap. Her clothing, too, is purposefully baggy and masculine so she can hide any defining features.
“Where’s his hand?” she repeats. “Who on this god forsaken island is missing a hand?”
The three men look at one another. Some realization starts to flicker in their eyes.
“Who is missing a hand and wears a…” She trails off, letting them put the pieces together.
“A hook,” Shorty says.
Tweed widens his eyes. “Oh no.”
Plaid doubles over, pulls down his mask and vomits on the stone.
“Holy shit. HOLY SHIT!” Tweed turns a circle, then runs away, then doubles back. “We’re going to fucking die, eh! We’re going to be dead by sundown!”
“How the fucking hell did you kidnap Captain Hook?” Shorty yells at no one. “It was supposed to be a page from the Portage Hall!”
“No, you said someone higher up!” Tweed shouts back. “Someone important!”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Yes, you did!” Plaid yells, his voice wet and raw.
“Shut up. All of you,” the woman says. She comes over to me and crosses her arms over her chest. “Captain Hook.”
“That’s me.”
“There seems to have been a terrible mistake.”
I snort. “You could say that.”
“What do you say we let you go and forget this ever happened?”
“Back on Neverland, you all would be gutted for this kind of a mistake. How do you call yourselves a gang?”
The woman digs in her pants pocket and mist assaults my sinuses again.
The room sways.
“We need some time to figure out our next steps,” she says. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“He’s…going…to…k—” I don’t finish my sentence before I’m out again.