Page 52 of Stalking Wendy Darling

I barely noticed when Sterling ran off to obey my orders, getting our weapons ready. I sensed Anton draw nearer, anticipating his own orders as the schooner came closer, closer. Just to fuck with him, I said nothing, gave no orders, and watched him shift his weight. If he spoke first, I might rip his head off his body, or maybe I’d tear out his throat with my teeth. I ran my tongue along sharp canines. They’d been that way for a week now, like my voice was a roughened growl, my eyes fullblack. The monster was taking over. If I’d run faster, moved sooner…

“How close should we allow it?” Anton asked finally, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over the hush and murmur of the ocean. The seas were calm, like even the water didn’t dare draw my attention.

“Closer.”

“Captain, they could fire on us.”

I snorted. “Not with those weapons.”

Tiny pathetic gunports. Against the Banshee, the schooner would be like a baby trying to win a knife fight.

“What are your orders, captain?” Anton asked tentatively, hands clasped behind his back even though the vulnerable position had to be screaming at him.

“Stay far away.”

He seemed to relax a fraction. “That’s wise, captain. Letting the schooner get any closer—”

“From. Me,” I corrected in a voice frozen with rage. My head was full of screaming, my body wracked with tension keeping me still. On the inside, I thrashed and fought and railed. I wanted to destroy everything on sight. I wanted my Wendy back.

I struggled to see anything remotely attractive about staying in this world without the woman who made me feel something after twenty years. She forced me out of the ice and numbness that had surrounded me for decades. She forced me back to life, or perhaps showed me life for the first time in my existence. And then ripped it all away.

Anton took a step back, a catch in his breath. I remained preternaturally still, watching the schooner cut through the calm sea towards us, my heart beating an erratic rhythm of fury. It had been that way since the monster devoured her. Irregular and fast. Manic.

Anton backed away and stalked to the railing. I heard him mutter that I’d get them all killed but the screams were so loud inside my head that his words had no impact. Maybe I wanted to obliterate us all. Or maybe I just wanted to feel something rip into me again, the way Wendy’s bright eyes and wicked smirk had. Maybe I wanted it to hurt.

“They’re close enough to board, captain!” someone shouted. Maceo maybe. I didn’t care who.

“So shoot them,” Anton yelled.

A corner of my mouth twitched into something too dead to be a smile. I turned slowly, scanning the melee on deck, hunting until I found my quartermaster. He froze, staring at me as I watched him with unwavering eyes. His throat bobbed in a gulp. My smile twitched, growing, as harmful and severing as a knife. I tilted my head slowly, not taking my eyes off him, and he scrambled away, the whites of his eyes showing as he moved out of my line of sight.

That, there. The rush of satisfaction, the bright burst of colour and smugness inside me. That was what I was searching for. Part of me hated Wendy for waking it up, for showing the yawning emptiness I’d harboured for years. I wanted the emptiness back.

“Ready,” Rolando roared, and one look at the schooner showed why. Figures were lined up along the edge of the ship with ropes in hand, ready to board the ship. My erratic heartbeat quickened, thrumming in the side of my neck. They were ready to cut their throats on my blades, ready to beg and plead for mercy, ready to gasp and run and scream. My own blood sang with it. This was the only thing left that made me feel alive.

“Aim!” Rolando yelled.

I felt the charge through my own blood, sizzling, burning. Not quite alive, not quite dead.

A gunshot rang out so abruptly that my heart jolted inside its cage, and I snapped my head around to stare as Rolando fell back with a cry, stumbling into the main mast. Joanna stood behind him, smoke caressing the barrel of the pistol she’d discharged, blasting a hole through his shoulder. Another little thrill went through me. I didn’t care where the violence came from, only that it filled the emptiness inside me. A smile pulled at my mouth, baring teeth.

“What are youdoing?”Ramone demanded, storming across the deck towards Joanna until she lifted her gun and aimed it right at his throat.

“Look,” she hissed. But her eyes searched the ship until they found mine, bright with an insanity I knew I wore too.“Look.”

My head was turning towards the schooner, confusion making me angry. Look atwhat?I only turned my face halfway before boots slammed into the polished mahogany of the deck, a lithe figure landing a few feet away from me. The landing was solid enough to tell me it wasn’t the first time he’d made a jump like that. I was already reaching for my knife, ready to carve his skin until bone gleamed, but my hand froze, breathing froze, entire being froze, when the man clutched his ribs and hissed, “Motherfucker!”

“Where thehellhave you been?” Joanna shrieked, sprinting across the deck.

I dragged my stare up from the newcomer’s boots, slowly, painfully, terrified to be wrong. Hope was barbed with spikes that dug into my chest, my lungs, my heart. My panicked stare travelled up legs that buckled, to a waist hung with knives and a pistol, up to a chest draped in a worn leather jacket far too big for her. My throat closed up. I knew that body. Had spent weeks obsessing over it when she was alive, and weeks since remembering every last detail about her.

“Long story,” that voice hissed again, rough with pain. My eyes shot up the last bit of distance as she grabbed for the deck to steady herself. My heart stopped at her face, that face, the face I’d tortured myself with.

My feet jerked forward a step, a sound clawing up my throat, panic and hope and disbelief ripping apart my chest. But it was her face, it wasWendy’sface, and that was her voice snarling in pain, her nostrils flaring, her jaw clenching, her lithe fingers digging into the wooden railing until her knuckles turned white.

“On reflection,” she panted, looking at me, her eyes carrying out the same appraisal of me as I’d made of her, “I shouldn’t have made such a grand entrance.”

“We thought you were dead!” Joanna snapped, finally reaching us. The crew closed around us too, curious and murmuring, eyeing Wendy like a ghost had boarded the Banshee.

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