Page 3 of Stalking Wendy Darling

“When I murder you, I’m taking the hat,” I yelled, jumping aside when he lined up a shot. The scent of explosives thickened in the air, a cloud of grey and silver obscuring his face for a moment, but I knew without a doubt this was the captain. The fearsome Kingston Hook, whose reputation blackened and bloodied the shores of every island in the Chain of Saints. He didn’t look nasty enough to have done half the things his reputation claimed. Where was the sneer, the haggard beard and crazy eyes? EvenIhad crazy eyes.

I ground my teeth, shielding behind a collection of lobster pots that would do little to prevent me being ripped apart if he shot again. Some fearsome captain he was. If he hadn’t been armed, I would have scaled the ladder I now spotted curving over the belly of the Banshee, climbed aboard, and thrown him quite nicely into the sea.

Maybe I’d make myself captain. I did like that hat, after all…

“Motherfucker!” I screeched, diving down the slick dock when he aimed and fired without hesitation, making a splintered mess of the lobster cages. “Give me back my sister!”

I might have imagined his sinister laugh. My nostrils flared, my anger incensed to a heat akin to the fires of Hell. I was going to burn this bastard until he screamed, rip an apology out of him for kidnapping my sister, along with ripping out his toenails. I’d never tortured someone before, but how hard could it be?

When the lanky fucker in the brown coat and really nice hat turned away, I leapt to my feet and ran as hard as I could for theladder, my breath coming fast and sharp, clawing its way from my lungs and up my throat.

“No!” I cried when the ship creaked and began to move, the winds favourable. “Why are you—so fucking—favourable,” I panted, pushing myself harder, my heavy coat a hindrance, making me sweat. I didn’t have time to remove it, only to keep running, my eyes glued to the ladder, my heart crashing into my ribs.

I could do it. I didn’t know what I’d do when I was aboard, or how I’d take on a whole crew, but I could do it. I stretched out my hand, a stitch piercing the muscle on my side; my nostrils flared as I ran through it, pain making my eyes sting. I could reach the ladder. I could—

A lance of fire tore through my shoulder and down my arm, and I dropped to the cobbles with a scream, cold soaking through my coat into my knees even as an inferno coursed through my shoulder. Tears streamed down my face, pain slow to join the fire but wrathful when it hit. I tilted my head up, staring at the Banshee through my tears, and saw the captain dip his pretty fucking hat.

I bared my teeth, a deep growling breath leaving me.

I tried to get to my feet, to get to that damned ladder, but the pain kept me on my knees, kept me crying, screaming, swearing. By the time I propped myself against a barrel, finally on my feet, Death’s Right Hand was out at sea. A strong swimmer might still catch up, but not one with a bullet in her shoulder.

“Are you mad, girl?” someone demanded, male and rough, unfamiliar. “You could have been killed. Even kids know to run when they see black sails. What are you doing runningtowardsthe damn ship?”

“They got my sister,” I said, suddenly burning hot, sweat dripping off my forehead. He fuckingshotme. I’d never been shot before. “He took my sister.”

“She’s gone,” the man said in his rough voice but not unkindly. In my swimming vision, he had three heads, all salt-stained and weathered, each in a crimson wool hat. “I’m sorry, girl, but she’s gone.”

“Say that again,” I panted, gritting my teeth against the heat, the agony, the deadness in my shoulder. “I fucking dare you.”

“It’s the truth, no matter how hard,” he sighed. “Best to make peace with it. Come on, I’ll take you to Doc Francis. She can patch you up.”

“Make peace with it,” I breathed, ignoring the black spots crowding into my vision, keeping my eyes fixed over the fisherman’s shoulder on the Banshee as she grew smaller, further. “Make peace with my sister being taken.”

“Being dead,” the man corrected sadly.

I really donotneed this negativity.

I dug around in my pocket and pulled out the knife I’d pilfered from Tajo’s stores, whipping it up and into the fisherman’s stomach.

“She isnot,”I snarled into his wide-eyed face,“dead.”

I ripped the knife out and watched him stagger back in surprise. I should have felt bad. I didn’t feel anything except fire and pain. I didn’t need Doc Francis, I needed revenge. I needed to save Joanna before her ribbons became bloodied.

A sound like a dying horse came from me when I took a step, preventing my knee buckling from sheer force of will alone.

“Should have stopped talking,” I told the fisherman, putting one foot in front of the other, taking the pain into myself, allowing it to flow through me as I dragged myself off the dock and to Mama’s.

I would kill the behemoth who took Joanna. I would kill Hook. I didn’t care how long it took me, or how difficult it would be. I would kill them all.

Chapter Two

WENDY

SEVEN DAYS LATER, THE SWORDFISH ISLE

Ithanked god every day that hair pins existed. Placing the last one in my strict up-do, I stood back to admire my efforts in the clouded little mirror. The cramped bedroom in the creaking inn at the small, sad port of Swordfish Isle didn’t offer much in the way of amenities. A bed riddled with lice (I slept on the floor), a window with no curtains and a spider web of cracks where someone’s fragile masculinity had driven them to punch it, and a three-legged table propped delicately against the wooden wall, topped with a single mirror. Oh, and a pot to piss in.

But on the plus side: hair pins. I didn’t have to cut off my hair and watch it fall, tragically, to the floor of the small inn bedroom. And at least it had been easy to find passage to this island from my home on the Silver Isle. Mama hadn’t been too pleased that I’d been running off with a gunshot wound in my shoulder, but Iwas as patched up as I was getting, and time was running out to save Joanna.

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