Page 42 of Stalking Wendy Darling

“I’ve had worse!” I hissed at the god, landing on a plush, slimy tongue. I wrinkled my nose, my stomach flipping. Gross.1 “Worse pain, I mean. That wasn’t a compliment!”

Dammit, now I was talking to a monster’s mouth. I was losing it.

On the plus side, the tentacle had released me, so I could finally reach my weapons. On the really depressing side, the second I reached for them, closing my other hand around the goodies I’d put in my pocket, a gush of fluid and monster saliva rushed around my ankles, rising to my knees.

It took me a beat too long to realise what it meant, what was about to happen. The second I figured it out, I dropped to my knees and slammed both knives into the monster’s tongue, but it didn’t stop its throat flexing in a swallow.

“I amnotfood,” I snarled, but the mouth moved with more force, more saliva rushing around me, and a chill of warning went through my body.

Oh great, I’m going to be eaten,I thought, and the next contraction of its throat proved me right, dragging my slick fingers from my knives, leaving them stuck there in its tongue as I was dragged down its throat.

The damn thing ate me.2

Chapter Twenty-Three

HOOK

Ishook my head hard to dislodge the howling scream from my brain, but it continued even as I threw myself at the railing, grabbing a line to stop myself falling as I leaned over the edge. My heart beat in triple time, frantic and terrified as I soured the sea for any sign of Wendy. I couldn’t even spot the creature anymore. It had disappeared back into the ocean, calming the waves, taking my woman with it.

When the scream eventually tapered out, a roar started inside my head, the rest of me painfully silent, as still as death.

“Sir?” Vea asked tentatively, tiptoeing closer.

I stood on the railing, staring at the calm sea, wondering how my world had just ended in the space of three minutes.

I couldn’t stop seeing Wendy look at me across the deck, staring past chaos and crew until she met my eyes, a look that cut me deep, that made my heart surge. She looked so happy, even under attack, even with a monster circling us. I kept seeing that bright flame of happiness in her storm eyes and itkilledme.

She was gone. Just one sacrifice in a long line of them.

I forced a breath, then another. It took effort to breathe.

“Get her back.” Rough hands grabbed my arm and ripped me off the railing. I stumbled onto the deck and then Joanna was throwing me against the rail, the way I’d done to Wendy so many times. “Get her back now!”

I shook my head, helpless.

Joanna’s nostrils flared. She shoved me and let go. “You won’t save her? Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

She reached for a rope to haul herself up but Maceo caught her in an unyielding grip around her middle, and pulled her away, kicking and screaming.

“She’s gone,” he said roughly. “That thing eats girls, and they never come back. Jumping into the ocean will just get you killed too, you fool.”

She threw an elbow into his gut, earning a grunt. I watched it with detachment, a strange numbness spreading through my chest. I was even worse than the lack of emotion I’d felt for years before I met Wendy, before her spark woke me up. Now I was ice. I was truly dead.

“There must be a way,” Joanna argued. “There’s a way to save her, you bastards just won’t do it.”

“Is she right?” This came from Vea, stalking across the ship, her eyes on me with a well of sympathy I didn’t care for. “Is there a way to save her?”

“No.” A single word was all I was capable of.

I turned and strode for the stairs, the ship passing in a blur. I locked myself in my cabin but the scent of her was thick, cruel and taunting. We’d made memories here just tonight, and now she was gone.

I sank onto the bed, running my hand over the sheets as if her warmth would still be in them. They were as cold as the ocean, as cold as the dead.

I tore my hand away and sat there, unmoving, unfeeling. Hollow.

I didn’t move for hours. Days.

Chapter Twenty-Four

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