Page 8 of Stalking Wendy Darling

“Hey, that’s talent,” I remarked with a genuine smile as I looked at my own cards. Oooh, I had a good hand. I loved goodhands. “Some would miss the railing and piss on deck. It takes real skill to pissoverthe railing.”

The behemoth snorted. Barrington. My sworn enemy. I couldn’t keep the fury off my face—I felt it knot my brows into a deep V, my jaw clenching, eyes narrowing to a sliver of pure murder, my shoulders tensing.

“You got a problem, boy?” Barrington demanded with a smirk that threw oil on the fire of my rage.

Yeah, asshole, you kidnapped my sister. Where the fuck is she?I hadn’t seen her, hadn’t heard a whisper about a woman, hadn’t heard anyone screaming or crying or even singing like she loved to do.

“No problem,” I replied, the words like gravel against my throat. “I just don’t like your face.” I turned to Sterling, whose face didn’t incite me to murder. “What are we playing?”

“Imperial Ruin,” he replied with a little grin. “Unless you don’t know how to play…”

I snorted. Growing up in the Silver Isle, I knew how to play every card game in the Chain and Saints. Even the big, scary ones that made wimps back out. “Sure you wanna play Imperial Ruin withme?”I asked, giving them all a cocky grin that fit my character but wasn’t entirely faked. “I’ll bleed all your coin from you.”

Rolando laughed, his moustache fluttering. “Big talk.”

“Big game,” I assured him, looking at my cards, letting my confidence show. Let them wonder if it was real or fake. “Shall I go first?”

Barrington gestured for me to play and either didn’t care that I looked at him like I was picturing cutting his skin off his face or was used to people planning his death.

“So magnanimous,” I muttered, but played a six of shells. Not a bad start.

The deck had five suits—shells, sails, crowns, swords, and monsters, numbered from one to ten, with a black card in every suit. Play a black card and you collected all the money from a player of your choosing. Play all five black cards and you won the game instantly. I’d only ever played five blacks once, and I’d been playing since I was eight.

The part that intimidated most players was a black card meant you had to give upeverything,not just whatever coins you put on the table—guns, knives, coins, jewellery, treasured family possessions, whatever you had on your person. I’d won a house from a man once because he forgot to remove his keys from his pocket.1

Across from me, Rolando smirked, exchanging a swift glance with his portly buddy Ramone. I wondered if they bonded over a lack of hair. I could see their plan a league away, and they weren’t subtle about it. Ramone handed his Schnauzer buddy a card under the table, Rolando passing one back. Consolidating their blacks, no doubt. They probably had a deal to split the winnings when they’d fleeced me.

I leaned back on my crate, inclining my head to Sterling who laid a seven of sails on the overturned barrel with a hand dripping gold jewellery and jewels, no doubt biding his time, saving his better cards for later. He could have had a bad hand, though. He was so smiley and friendly and upbeat; it was impossible to read these types, because they smiled no matter what.

Barrington matched Sterling’s card with a seven of swords, meeting my hostile glare with a little smile that made my nostrils flare. I pictured cutting him up into little pieces to calm myself down but I wanted to scream in his face. Where the hell is my sister?

The only issue was, the whole crew were involved in the kidnapping. We knew to look the other way when you sawblack sails, and to run wheneveranycrew member noticed you. No matter who—massive behemoth or scrawny little shit or silent grunter like Neville. Every member of this crew must have kidnapped a woman. If they hadn’t, they were complicit. Following captain’s orders.

I tried not to glare his way, lest I get thrown overboard for insubordination before I could exact my revenge and find Joanna. I couldn’t make a move on the captain who shot me until I’d found her, butthisasshole… A smile curved the corners of my mouth. Oh, I could rid the world of him.

He’d made a mistake by sitting down to play Imperial Ruin with me. Pirates were notorious for their temper, and oh boy was I tempestuous.

I waited until we were each down to two cards, not a single black played yet but two eights, a nine, and a ten just put into play. I had a ten of monsters, the card illustrated with a fearsome giant squid with three rows of teeth and twenty black, beady eyes. The paintings gave some people the creeps, but I’d never been scared of monsters, or the dark, or the depths of the ocean. I’d never had normal phobias. My only fear was letting someone else be taken from me.

I saw their not-so-sneaky passes under the table, engineering their cards so that I’d lose and they’d all win. I let it slide most of them game, content in my amusement, but I was starting to get bored and this had never been about winning the contents of their pockets. When Barrington glanced at something over the deck and narrowed his eyes, clearly meaning to distract me for a moment as he passed a card to Rolando, I leapt off the crate so hard it turned over.

“You bald, cheating bastard.” I whipped out a knife before anyone could stop me and launched across the scant bit of space, the slick deck aiding my speed, almost gifting Barrington’s stomach to my blade. I had enough momentum that the knifesank easily, burying itself in his gut before anyone could react, let alone stop me. “I saw you passing cards, asshole,” I said loudly. “So here’s an important lesson: I’m the last person you want to cheat.”

I twisted the knife, gripping his coat when he struggled, trying to push me off him, kicking my ankle. As it was, he kicked my good ankle, so I was lucky. Wrenching him closer, my voice dropped to a whisper, I hissed, “Where the fuck is my sister? The girl you took at Silver Isle? Where is she?”

His eyes widened. I wrenched the dagger out and drove it into another, fleshy part of his middle, my grin growing. God, it felt good to take out some of my rage on someone who actually deserved it. Mr. Maudlin had been a homophobic dick, but he wasn’t the source of my rage. This bastard, however? He deserved everything he got. I leaned my weight on my arm, ripping open a hole in his middle. He yelled and screamed so loudly that I sensed the crew’s attention snap in our direction.

“Tell me quickly,” I taunted. “Or I’ll kill you.”

“Bitch,” he bit out, his eyes full of pain and loathing. I jerked back when he spat on my cheek, and had the pleasure of watching the blood drain from his face at whatever he beheld in my expression.

“Wrong answer,” I breathed, everything going still and cold inside me, my hand steady, my body strong, powerful. Everything else fell away; I slapped at the hands that tried to pull me away from my enemy, elbows driven into stomachs until they fell back, allowing me to cut a vicious chasm in Barrington’s stomach, whipping my dagger up past his ribs and into his heart next.

“Bye, bye,” I whispered, watching the light drain from his eyes.

I would have loved to extract more information from him, but even with the world falling away, I knew I stood on the deckof Death’s Right Hand, surrounded by people, and I couldn’t show myself yet. Not until I found Joanna.

I let them think this was about the cards, and money, and cheating. Besides, the whole crew had taken my sister, which gave me a lot more people to torture for her whereabouts. Nobody would miss this guy.

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