Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
A more villainous looking lot never hung in a row on Execution dock.
The impact hits like a fall onto concrete, and I feel like I must shatter to bits and pieces and float back and forth, lazy leaves drifting to the bottom of the sea.
Not long after, I feel a pair of strong hands grabbing me under my arms and pulling. I don’t know if I should struggle or swim or let go. But none of that is my decision. It’s the pirate’s.
We surface in the black sea as the full moon dances off the water around us. The pirate sticks his fingers in his mouth and lets out a loud, sharp whistle. It’s answered by shrieks from the forest above. If I even begin to imagine what’s in the water beneath me, I may freeze up and sink.
He drapes one arm around my chest and starts swimming with the other.
“I can swim.” I sputter, saltwater trying to sneak into my lungs.
“Just kick, lass.” His words are labored as he pulls me through the water, keeping me afloat while he struggles to tame the rising waves and the pull of the tide.
I don’t want to be here. Not in these waters. I kick as best I can and rise from the surface enough to get my bearings.
“Hey!” I twist from his grip and tread water as he stops. “We’re not going to shore?”
Reaching up, he snugs his hat onto his head, shading his eyes from the moonglow. “Why? You’d like to have words with the cockatrice?”
I whip my head back to the cliff above, though the creature isn’t there—or if it is, it’s lurking in the shadows and wondering how its meal disappeared so suddenly. “We’ll drown out here.” I turn and start kicking away from him.
His hand comes down on my shoulder, and he pulls me against him. “We won’t drown.” Spinning me in the water, he points. “We’re headed home.” His mouth is at my ear, his warm breath tickling even more than the water dripping along my skin.
A wave crests and falls ahead of us, and that’s when I see the black sails in the night. The Jolly Roger. Hook’s ship.
“No!” I try to kick again, to get away from him, but the pirate is everywhere, wrapping me up and holding me steady despite my splashing.
“Calm down.” His voice is gruff as his palm goes to my throat and squeezes lightly.
“Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down!” I struggle, but only manage to dunk myself.
He pulls me up again. “Be brave, Moira.”
“I’m not brave!” I scream, my voice breaking as the truth tears out of me.
Because I’m not brave. I wasn’t when Coy needed me, when this brute killed him.
I’ve never been brave, and I can’t see myself starting now when I’m in deep water with a murderous pirate.
I thrash, trying to free myself from his hold.
He pulls me against his chest, his arm like an iron bar across my back. “Do you want to attract the mermaids?”
That stops me. I still feel the sting from Marinda’s bite. If I never see another mermaid, it’ll be too soon.
“No,” I whisper and spit the saltwater that sloshes into my mouth. “But there’s no way I can swim all the way to the ship.”
“Just take it easy and follow me.” He releases me, then strikes out ahead, swimming easily.
I throw one more glance toward shore where the sounds of raucous beasts still bounce across the waves. There’s no good choice here. Either die in some monster’s maw on the shore or let this pirate asshole hand me over to his boss.
“Come on, lass,” he calls.
It’s no easy decision, but I turn and begin to swim, following the pirate out to sea.
He’s a murderer and just as much a monster as the creatures on the shore, but he seems to feel certain we can make it to the ship.
After that, maybe I can talk my way into staying alive.
The monsters on the island won’t be quite so open to discussion.
He’s a strong swimmer, but I can tell he’s holding back for me, glancing at me frequently to make sure I haven’t given up. That idea certainly has its merits, especially when my thoughts wander back to Coy, to the look in his eyes …
A whistle sounds across the waves. It’s a high-low, not the same tone as what the pirate used earlier.
“Ahoy!” a voice calls, and that’s when I see a small boat cutting through the waves toward us.
“About fucking time, Starkey!” The pirate reaches out and grabs me, then holds me in front of him. “Get a move on!”
I gasp as the boat turns hard right and drifts up to us with perfect speed until it stops right in front of me.
“Here. Take her.” The pirate lifts me from the water, and another reaches down, his hands out. But the pirate pulls me back. “I didn’t say for you to lift her by her tits, Starkey,” he snarls.
“Oh, my apologies.” Starkey speaks with what sounds to me like a posh English accent, as if he stepped right out of a movie. “Let me try that again, love.” He reaches farther and grabs me under my arms.
I yelp when my pirate’s hand finds its way to my ass and pushes me from the water. “Watch it!”
“Just helping you, lass,” he grumbles.
Starkey puts me down on a little bench, then offers his hand to my pirate.
I grip the sides of the rowboat as it rocks violently, but then all three of us are on board.
“Starkey, row.” My pirate sits next to me. “Are you hurt?”
“What?” I stare at the Jolly Roger as Starkey—dressed in much nicer clothes than I’d expect from a pirate—begins to row with steady strength.
“Water in her ears.” Starkey snorts a laugh, then goes quiet when my pirate glares at him.
Funny I think of him as ‘my pirate’ when he’s anything but.
He’s my enemy, the man who killed Coy right in front of me.
A grunt escapes him as he rolls his shoulder, and I watch as a red stain grows along his wet shirt.
Pan’s arrow wound is still bothering him. Good. It’s what he deserves.
“I’m not hurt.” Not physically, at least. I have my usual aches since arriving in Neverland, including the headache, but now it’s joined by the mermaid bite and the open hole through my heart where memories of Coy leak out.
“I don’t know why it matters since all you’re going to do is turn me over to Hook so he can kill me.
” I wrap my arms around myself and turn to look at the Jolly Roger as it grows ever larger.
“She’s salty.” Starkey grins. “I like that in a woman.”
“Mind your manners.” My pirate’s voice is low, lethal.
“Apologies again.” He sighs and keeps rowing, perhaps finding it better not to open his mouth lest more apologies fly out.
Manners on a pirate—now that’s a laugh.
The ship looms large now, the sides the same dark wood as the rest of it. It rests on the waves, unbothered by the full moon or the black water beneath it. Above, I see shapes hurrying along the decks, some of them calling out to each other with nautical terms that have zero meaning for me.
It sends a chill through me, that this hulking craft of wood and treachery will probably be my last stop on my trip to Neverland.
Once again, I wonder if I’ll simply wake up.
Walk the plank, wake up in my dorm room.
Strung up on a rope, wake in my dorm. Sliced from ear to ear, asleep and drooling on my desk.
I snicker to myself at the mix of gallows humor and false hope.
Now that I’ve been here long enough, it’s the real world that begins to seem fantastical.
“Plummeted like Icarus, I tell you.” Someone’s voice echoes across the water, and I look up to find a pirate gawking down at us. “But here they are, not a lost limb between them.”
“Smee, stop your yapping and drop the tackles!” Starkey eases up on the oars, and we float closer to the brigand’s ship.
I can’t help but shiver as the ocean breeze brushes past me.
A wood frame swings out above us, and ropes are lowered from it. Once they reach the boat, Starkey and my pirate make quick work of getting our small boat hooked up. Then someone above yells, and a pulley begins to turn with a creak as we rise from the water.
“Hang on, lass.” My pirate stands, his balance impossibly good despite the wobbling of the boat, and grips the rope overhead, keeping it steady as we ascend.
“Swing her in!” another man yells as we crest the top deck of the ship, and the wooden frame pulls us onto the deck and lowers us slowly.
“Make fast, Starkey.” My pirate jumps out onto the deck, then offers me his hands.
I look around at the ship and meet several sets of curious eyes, though no one speaks to me. Starkey busies himself with pulling ropes tight and securing the rowboat onto the Jolly Roger’s deck.
I have nowhere else to go. It’s not like I’m going to jump back into the sea or somehow figure out how to lower the rowboat and escape. I don’t want to be here, but that choice wasn’t mine in the first place.
With a sigh, I reach for the pirate. He grips my waist and lifts me from the rowboat and onto the polished deck. I drip all over it, my clothes still drenched with seawater, but no one says anything.
A man with spectacles hurries up, his attire not terribly pirate-y either.
Unlike Starkey, this pirate looks more like an accountant.
A neat haircut and an even neater tunic with leather pants, he seems to have every hair in place.
Giving me an appraising look, his brows draw together, worry in his eyes.
“Smee, escort her to the captain’s quarters.” My pirate gestures for me to follow the accountant.
“Hey, wait, I …” Completely ignoring me, my pirate stalks off toward the front of the ship. “Hey!” I yell after him, but he doesn’t turn around.
I jump as Starkey lands on the deck beside me. “Jeez!”
“I can take her to the captain’s quarters, Smee.” Starkey gives me a charming smile. “Give us a chance to get to know each other.”
If I didn’t already suspect he was a fuckboy, I know now for sure. Blond hair, bright green eyes, and dimples for days—he’s as handsome as they come, not to mention the physique. I suppose a pirate’s life keeps you in shape.
“No, thank you.” Smee cuts between the two of us and takes my elbow. “Right this way, miss.”
He leads me down the dark wood deck, pirates scattering this way and that as we pass ropes, masts, and various openings that lead to lower decks. I’m no expert on pirate ships—or any ships, for that matter—but this one certainly seems huge.
A rhythmic, grinding noise catches my attention, and I watch as two men, both shirtless, turn a crank attached to a thick chain that disappears beneath the water.
“What’s that?”
Smee stops and looks at me, his mouth twisting in disdain. “The anchor, of course.”
Something in the way he says it rubs me raw. “Look, buddy, I don’t need that tone, okay? I’m being kidnapped again, and I’d rather not have to deal with your condescending attitude while I’m at it!” I snap.
His eyes widen, the spectacles dropping to the end of his nose.
What am I doing? Am I trying to get myself thrown into the sea to drown? Or worse, get eaten by mermaids? I step back from him and hold my breath.
“You tell him, girl.” A pirate strides by with a huge coil of rope over one shoulder and golden hoops dangling from his ears. “Smee needs someone to knock some sense into him.”
I recognize him from my first night on the island. He’s the one with the Italian accent who has a mermaid lover.
“Oh, shut it, Cecco,” Smee grumbles and motions for me to follow him.
I glance over the side to try and catch a glimpse of the anchor, but only the length of thick chain, some of the links draped with seaweed, are visible.
Maybe I should take a page from Smee’s playbook and focus on where we’re going instead of what’s happening around me.
After all, I’m being taken to the captain’s quarters.
Hook’s quarters. It’s a sobering thought, one that fills me with a queasy sort of dread.
My feet begin to drag, and I slow to a stop as Smee passes the giant steering wheel and strides to a set of doors behind it.
When he opens the door, the dread inside me explodes into full blown panic, and I backpedal right into someone.
“Whoa.” A deep voice.
I whirl and find a huge man with tattoos covering his entire face and chest, black ink everywhere I look. I scramble back, and he steps toward me as a scream rises in my throat.
He arches one eyebrow as my wail dies on my lips, then steps around me to adjust the wheel, spinning it clockwise a few turns before securing it.
“Bill.” Smee nods.
“Smee.” The man whose voice is deeper than the sea nods back, then gives me an amused look before returning down the deck.
I’m surprised the ship doesn’t shake with each of his footfalls.
“Miss.” Smee impatiently waves me toward the open door.
“I-is he in there?” I swallow hard and look behind me, trying to spot the black feather plume or the gleam of moonlight on a metal hook.
“Please, miss. I have work to do.” He gestures again.
I glance toward the dark waves and to the island.
Peter is there, and I have to believe he’s okay.
Even if Coy … No, I can’t go down that road right now.
I can’t think about him or the kindness he showed me, because if I do, I’ll crumble.
That’s exactly what I don’t need, especially when I’m about to meet the villainous Captain Hook.
Coy would want me to be tough, to hold onto hope and wait for Peter to find a way to come for me. A chill breeze blows off the ocean, reminding me that I’m still soaked, tired, and injured.
Smee taps his polished boot on the deck.
“I’m going.” I ease toward the door, my eyes straining as I try to see what’s inside.
The closer I get, the higher my tension rises until I could swear my hair is standing on end.
When I pass through and find the captain’s quarters uninhabited, I let out a sigh of relief.
He’s not here. I’m safe. For now. I can take a second to regroup, to think of some way out of this. I’m okay.
Some of the tension in me unwinds until Smee closes the door behind me, and I hear the lock click into place.