Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Then unexplored patches arose in it and spread; black shadows moved about in them; the roar of beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win.
“Let me go!” I flail in the pirate’s hold as he carries me through the forest and away from Coy. “Let me help him!”
“He’s gone,” he says gruffly and hoists me higher, keeping me pressed to his chest as he pushes through the saplings and thickets.
The island is alive, every bit of it humming with the promise of danger and death. Roars and cries, screams and eerie calls are all around us. But I don’t care. I have to get back to Coy. He needs help.
“Please.” I push away from the pirate and try to look into his eyes. “Please!”
He puts me down and grips my shoulders hard. “He’s gone, lass. Gone. There’s nothing for it.”
Hot tears track down my cheeks as I look up into the darkness beneath the brim of his hat. “Because you killed him.”
“Aye.” He doesn’t falter.
“You piece of shit!” I slap him hard across the face, my palm left stinging from the impact.
He takes it without a word.
“Murderer!” I beat on his chest, pummeling him as I sob, my heart cracking all over and tears seeping up through the fractures.
“You fucking pirate asshole!” I keep hitting him, my fists bouncing off, my heart still broken.
Until my arms tire, until I can barely breathe from the weight of grief, until I have to lean on him.
“Are you done, lass?” he asks.
“I’ll never be done hating you,” I spit back at him.
Faster than an adder, he reaches behind me and grabs a fistful of my hair, then leans me back until I need to hold onto him to stay on my feet. Little pinpricks of pain race across my scalp, and he keeps his grip rough and steady.
“I don’t care if you hate me.”
“Let me go!” I yelp when he shakes me, and I have to grab onto him even harder.
His face is only inches from mine, his gaze boring into me even though I can’t see his eyes.
“You’re upset. I understand that. But you’re also in a world of shit right up to your perfect tits at the moment, and you don’t even know it.
Now you’re going to come along with me to the ship, and you aren’t going to do anything stupid like try to escape. Have I made myself clear?”
Hatred, the kind that burns you inside and out, bubbles in me like lava. I’ve never felt this level of rage before, never wanted to gouge out someone’s eyes or burn their house down with them in it. But now I do. Now I know what that feels like. Thanks to him.
“Answer me,” he growls.
“Clear.” I chew the word and spit it out.
“Good. Now that you’ve gotten all that out of your system, it’s incumbent on me to warn you that if you strike me like that again, I won’t be responsible for what I do to you afterwards.
Am I understood?” He leans me even farther back, his other hand going to my hip and yanking me against him until his arms are the only thing holding me up.
“I asked you if you understood me, lass?”
“I understand,” I say through gritted teeth.
He straightens up and puts me on my feet. “Glad we got all that hashed out. Come on.” He takes my elbow and pulls me with him through the trees.
There’s nothing I can do. My tears continue to fall as he marches me along. I’m caught. Coy’s dead. I can still see the surprise on his face whenever I close my eyes, and my god, it hurts. It hurts so bad that I wonder if there’s a knife in my chest just like his.
“Down.” The pirate yanks me to the ground.
I can’t see, my eyes blurry with tears and the full moon shedding only a little light under the green canopy above us. Not that it matters. But then I hear something. A whoop-whoop noise. That’s when I catch movement in the trees.
“Fuck!” The pirate covers me with his body as something screeches right over our heads.
Once the noise stops, he pulls his pistol from its holster.
I want to ask him what’s wrong, what the creature is. But I don’t. I silently hope that it carries him away and drops him in the sea where he can drown.
He gets to his knees, his gaze above us.
“Stay down, lass. It’s a bat. A big bastard, too.
Out for blood.” He pulls a short rod from the side of his gun, loads some powder and a ball into the barrel, then tamps it down.
His movements are fluid and easy, even in the dark.
This isn’t his first rodeo. Of course it isn’t.
He’s a pirate. A murderer. And he’s a crew member on the ship of the worst of the worst—Captain Hook.
“I hope it eats you.” I voice my thoughts, even if it might get me a smack or worse.
He smirks down at me. “Not me, lass. I’m too big for it to carry off. But you … Well, you’d make a fine meal for its brood up in the Silver Mountains.”
I shiver and wrap my arms around myself.
“Now keep quiet.” He aims the pistol above us.
I curl into a ball, trying to make myself small so the bat can’t grab me. A high-pitched screech slashes through the night, and I gasp at how close it is.
“Easy, lass.” The pirate puts his other hand on my shoulder.
I go to shrug him off, but I hear that whoop-whoop again, and I freeze.
“There you are.” The pirate fires, the sound loud in my ears. I cower, covering my head with my hands as his steady pressure remains on my shoulder.
A thump follows soon after, then a hair-raising shriek that dies off to a hiss and then nothing. The bat lies only a few feet away, its wings spread wide and its body a thick black mass that looks velvety in the dappled moonglow. Impossibly huge, it shudders and lies still.
Then I see the fangs jutting from its mouth, each of them at least a foot long. “Holy shit.”
“Time to go.” The pirate stows his gun and pulls me up. “That shot will keep the creatures off us for only a moment. We have to get to sea.”
He crashes through a thicket, pulling me along with him. “Faster, lass.”
What sounds like a nest of rattlesnakes causes him to veer away from the top of the rise, and we plunge deeper into the trees.
I stumble, my ankle twisting on the rough terrain. The rattling grows louder, my mind conjuring an enormous snake wrapped around one of the trees. Given the bat, I’m probably not far off.
“Shit.” He turns and scoops me into his arms, and then he’s running through the forest, his heart thumping against me as I cling to him.
Something slithers behind us, and I catch a glimpse of slitted, glowing eyes.
“There’s a …” I don’t know what it is. “There’s something behind us!”
“Cockatrice.” He grunts and jumps a stream, then launches us up the other side, his boots sliding on the loose shale.
I don’t want to be in the pirate’s arms, but I want even less to be eaten by whatever a cockatrice is, so I wrap my arms around his neck and hang on.
“We’re almost there.” His grip tightens on me as he runs down a rocky slope toward the sea that crashes far below us. The trees thin, and the ground lightens with sandy striations and outcrops of rock.
I chance another look behind us and see the creature. It’s still chasing us, its slitted eyes in the head of a rooster with impossible fangs, and a tail whipping out behind it with a rattle on the end. I can’t stop the scream, the terror inside me boiling over at the monster in the trees.
“Hold on tight.” The pirate turns around, facing the creature, and flings his left arm forward. A blade flies away through the moonlight, but it glances off the creature’s scaly neck.
“Fuck me.” He starts to run again, his entire body tense as he tries to keep his balance down the increasingly vertical slope to the beach.
The monster hisses, the rattle rising high in the air behind it as it plunges after us.
The pirate stops suddenly, and I turn to look. We’re on a cliff over the sea. It’s a trip straight down into dark waters, no path to the beach at all.
“Brace yourself.” He hefts me up higher.
“Don’t.” I try to pull out of the pirate’s grip. “I can’t go into the water again. I can’t.” Nothing good ever comes of me swimming in the waters of Neverland. “Please!” I scream.
His mouth is set into a grim line as he clutches me to his chest. “Hold onto me, lass. Don’t let go.” He looks behind us one more time at the approaching beast, then with a running leap that carries us off the cliff, we plunge down into the cold, dark waters that promise only death.
Read A Sea of Risk and Ruin, Book 2 of the Never and Night Series.