Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Sometimes, though not often, he had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them.
Thunder rolls over the landscape as Coy jumps ahead of me, his hands up. “Wait! Wait. We’re not here to fight,” he yells.
The forest goes dark again, and I hold my breath as Nibs takes my arm and starts walking me slowly backwards. We don’t get far. The next lightning bolt reveals another line of people behind us, most of them with their bows drawn.
“Shit.” I scoot closer to Nibs as Tootles moves to my other side.
“If you aren’t here to fight, then why are you here at all?” A voice lilts through the quiet.
“Shiner?” Coy calls. “That you?”
“Coy.” Recognition and a snort of amusement. “How have I managed to catch you so easily? Hmm? Last time I had to chase you all the way through the forest and up into the fairy mounds.”
He laughs low in his throat. “I remember. I also remember how nice you look under the light of the moon with nothing on you except me.”
I blink. Then blink more. Holy shit, Coy. Well played.
She laughs, her sultry tones meant just for him. I feel like I just stumbled into the wrong room at a party. A very sexy wrong room.
“You going to let us pass? We need to get home.”
Lightning strikes the sea, tendrils of electricity crackling along the water. The thunder seems to shake even more rain down from the sky, drenching us.
“Did you find the tree?” she asks.
“Yeah.” Coy’s voice is low and cold. “We did.”
“I’m sorry.” She moves closer, though I can only see her in a glancing flash of lightning. “Coy, you and your boys are free to go. I’m here for her.”
“Me?” I chirp.
“You can’t have Moira.” Coy bristles.
“Yeah, you can’t have me,” I tack on.
“We just want to borrow her. Tell Peter to come fetch her when he’s back from his little swim.” Her voice has moved now, closer to my left in the dark.
“Not a chance, Shiner.”
“You never come quietly, do you?” She laughs, that sultriness and innuendo all over her words. “Have it your way.”
Coy yells, and another flash of lightning shows him in a fist fight with two of our attackers. Tootles raises his fists, and Nibs swings his bow out in an arc, trying to knock them back.
“Moira, run!” Coy’s voice is strained, and I can’t see him in the drenched dark.
I turn and start to scramble away, ducking low to try and avoid Nibs’s bow and Tootles’s fists.
I bump into a tree, then skirt around it and keep going as another flash of lightning shows me a path through the forest. Following it, I hurry along, my feet sloshing in my shoes as I slip and slide my way deeper into the trees.
A vine smacks me in the face, and I lift a hand to my aching cheek.
“Shit, that hurt.” I keep going, my ankles turning on roots as the rain continues to pound.
When I don’t hear the sounds of fighting anymore, I stop and finally turn around. I can’t see anything. Not until the lightning flashes again.
I gasp and fall back against a tree trunk when I see a woman right behind me. Long blonde hair braided into an elaborate design is swept up on top of her head, and her eyes are ringed in black paint.
“You move slower than a wounded boar.” She rolls her eyes in the last of the lightning flash, and then she grabs me, her grip strong on my forearm as she starts pulling me along with her.
“Hey! Let go!” I try to pull away, but she doesn’t let go.
She lets out a few short whistles, and I feel people converging around me. Before I can try to wrench my arm away, I’m grabbed and thrown over a shoulder.
“Hey!” I beat on the brute’s back, but he holds me with one arm barred across my legs. “Put me down!”
“At least she blocks some of the rain.” He chuckles as he carries me through the dark.
“Let’s get her back. Coy and Peter will be on our trail any second now, and we need some time with her.”
“Coy! Coy, help!” I yell as we start moving quickly through the rain, the man beneath me taking sure steps as he hauls me through the woods and along an embankment.
I realize quickly that there’s no way Coy can hear me over the thunder and rain.
The island is too loud, the wail of the wind and the cacophony of a billion drops of rain drowning out my cries for help, almost as if Neverland is purposely helping my kidnappers.
Hanging limply, I sputter as the water drips along my face and into my nose. I blow it out, then press my chin to the brute to keep the water from drowning me.
“Faster, the moon’s getting high.” Someone passes us, his feet slapping against the muddy ground.
For all my insistence that none of this is real, this certainly feels real.
The uncomfortable way his shoulder is digging into my stomach, the rain turning cold and making me shiver, the steady pace of trudging through the terrain as lightning streaks overhead—it all seems real. Real enough to be deadly.
We begin moving downhill, the trees still thick around us as the brute almost loses his footing. I scream as he steadies himself, and then he has the nerve to move faster. A whiff of smoke hits my nose, and then the rain finally stops.
He leans over and puts me on my feet.
I’m finally able to breathe again, though I know my stomach is going to be sore. “What the hell?” I stare up at the giant who only gives me a goofy smile in return.
We’re in some sort of round building, the walls of polished wood and the floor hard-packed dirt that’s swept clean.
It’s a large space, and furs and pillows are scattered along the curving walls.
Sconces with thick candles cast light from all angles, and a cheery fire crackles at the very back of the room.
“That’s Bunk.” The woman who was speaking to Coy steps in front of me. “I’m Shiner.”
“Okay.” I wrap my arms around myself, and to my embarrassment, my teeth chatter.
“Come sit by the fire.” She takes my elbow.
I pull it away. “No.”
“You want to be cold and wet?” She raises a blonde eyebrow. Even though she’s soaked, her locks sodden and the black makeup around her eyes running down her cheeks, I can tell she’s beautiful.
“No, but I’d be warm and safe if you hadn’t taken me from Coy!” I snap, then fear starts to eat away at my edges, like a rat with a piece of cheese. “Is he okay?”
“Coy’s fine.” She shrugs. “He’s just a pain in the ass.”
“Sounds like you two know each other pretty well.” I eye the fire and ease toward it, not wanting to look too eager. But, of course, my damn teeth chatter again.
“Coy?” She grins. “Yeah, ever since the Lost Boys grew up, I’ve had a use for him. A few, in fact.”
So Peter was telling the truth about the whole sex thing. Makes sense. Coy’s handsome and has a good heart. At least Shiner has good taste in men.
“Come on. Warm up. I promise I won’t bite.” She gestures to the fire where three others are already seated. One is the brute who carried me—Bunk. And there are two more, a man and a woman who look at me with nothing short of suspicion.
“Cobweb and Wraith.” Shiner points out the woman and then the man. “They won’t bite either, but Bunk—well, you never know how hungry he might get.”
I pause.
“Kidding.” Shiner sits next to the woman, Cobweb. “Only kidding. Please, sit. We won’t hurt you. Doesn’t make sense going to all the trouble to take you from Coy if we wanted you dead, right?”
“That’s not exactly reassuring.” I sit on one of the fluffy animal-hide pillows and scooch closer to the fire. It crackles, as if welcoming an old friend. “Why am I here? And where even is here?” I glance around, but the room gives me no clues. I make a guess. “You’re the Neverians?”
Cobweb snorts a laugh. “Peter came up with that name.”
“Then what do you call yourselves?”
“We’re the guardians of the island.” Wraith twirls a knife in his palm. “Always have been. Always will be.”
“Okay, Guardians then. You were all born here?” I ask.
“We’re here, and we’ll do what we have to do to protect this place.” Wraith’s answer doesn’t shed much light.
“From Hook?”
“From anyone or anything who threatens it.” Shiner squeezes the water from her braids and flicks it into the fire. It hisses but settles back down quickly.
“Anyone.” Wraith points his blade at me.
“Me?” I gawk at him. “I don’t want to hurt the island. I don’t even want to be here in the first place!”
“Go easy, Wraith.” Cobweb leans down and yanks off her wet boots, then her thick socks that are covered in patches. “We don’t know anything yet.”
“Okay, can we stop with the vague shit?” I throw my hands up. “I’d like some answers. Why am I here? What are you going to do with me?”
Wraith and Shiner look at each other, but no one speaks.
“Ugh! I’m tired of cryptic nonsense!” I get to my feet and stomp toward the wide door. “How about this? Why don’t I just walk out of here, eh? I don’t see why—”
A series of howls cut through my tirade.
“Moon’s high.” Wraith smirks. “You can go out there if you want.”
“Go ahead.” Bunk snickers.
I want to smack both of them, especially when I realize how much I miss the warmth of the fire.
Another round of howls is met with something deeper, a roar that I could swear comes from nearby.
I back away from the door and re-take my seat.
“Good decision.” Shiner reaches over and grabs a small towel and hands it to me. “For your hair.”
“Thanks.” I take it. It’s not exactly the softest thing I’ve ever used, but it wicks up some of the rain water that’s soaked me through.
“Like I said, Moira, we won’t harm you.”
“Great. So what are we going to do? Play charades?”
Cobweb grins. “I’m a legend at that game.”
“You wish.” Bunk shakes his head.
The rest of them freeze. Then I realize what he’d said. ‘Wish’ really is a bad word here. Like, worse than the c-word back home (though I quite like the c-word, to be honest).
Bunk glances around then pales. “I take it back!” he yells so loudly it makes me jump.
The others relax a little then return to drying themselves as if nothing astonishingly weird just happened.