Page 14 of The First Lost Boy (The Shadows of Neverland Duet #2)
Ava
I drag in breath after breath, each more painful than the last.
Grains of sand coat my legs as I sit in front of the sea. The water looks like it’s stretching but can’t quite reach me.
A few young men stand nearby, talking about a ship anchored in deeper water. It must be theirs. They’re shirtless, all wearing pants that have been cut off at the knee and are worn and frayed.
I don’t recognize any of them. Don’t know where I am or how I got here.
My palms sting. I rub them together and watch the sand fall away. I blink it out of my eyes and use my forearm to wipe it off the side of my face.
A quiet groan comes from behind me. When I twist to see who made the sound, a crevice of pain yawns between my shoulder blades.
A guy with dark hair is lying on the ground. He doesn’t groan again. His chest rises and falls, so he’s alive but unconscious.
Letters are etched into his flesh. P-A-R-I-S… I remember his dark hair, perfectly coiffed, a beautiful accent and a mischievous grin, but I’m not sure what happened to him. Has he been hurt?
I start to move toward him to see if he’s okay when a surge of memory overwhelms me. I sit and take in lungfuls of air, absorbing my past like it’s the air I’m gulping. Remembering my sister, Hudson and his crew, Peter and the Lost, the town, Wendy, the tree with all the names and what it felt like to cut through one of them, the treehouses, the feel of being on board Hook’s ship, Nyin…
Then I look at Peter with his golden hair as he grins triumphantly at the ship, his eyes unfocused like he’s listening to whomever is aboard. I glance at Bones and know that Paris is lying on the ground because of him. Wraith, who’s hated me since clamping eyes on me, clutches his head like he’s trying to keep it in one piece on his neck.
As I slowly stand, pain streaks down my back and the muscles of my legs quake. My arms feel incredibly heavy. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.
Peter is suddenly beside me, sharply assessing. There’s a keenness about him that raises the hair on the back of my neck. “Welcome back, Six – excuse me – Seven ,” he says with a smirk.
A strange sensation sends goosebumps over my skin. One moment, I’m staring at Peter, and the next, my consciousness is falling backward. It splashes into a body of water and I feel like I’m floating on my back in the middle of a vast lake, gazing up at the stars shimmering above me.
It feels like I’ve lost my footing on unsteady rock and have entered a chasm with the tumbling boulders. That my body surrounds me, but I’ve receded from it.
It feels strange, but I’m not afraid. I can still feel my skin. Still hear my heart beating in my chest. Still see what’s happening on some level of consciousness.
But for a shivering moment, I get the overwhelming sense that I’m not alone in this place. There is another presence that feels like the darkness I’ve felt in my marrow, settled or slithering, for as long as I can remember.
I thought it was the shadows I took from Belle, but I was wrong. It’s her.
And then I remember when she found me. I was out playing in the backyard when a bright, burning ball of light hit the ground, skidding to a stop at my bare feet. Scuttling back, I watched that light bleed away into shadow. It stretched across the yard to me and slipped coolly over my skin, sinking into me like water into a sponge.
She was so exhausted from her journey that she settled into my middle, curled up, and went to sleep. I was about to run in and drag my mama outside to see the mark she’d burnt into our grass and tell her what happened with the star lady when he suddenly appeared in the sky, heading straight for me.
A boy with shadowy wings hovered over me, smiling bright as the sun.
And I wasn’t afraid of him, because of her. She thrummed with what I thought was happiness to know he was near. I thought I could trust him. So, I went with him that day. And she was with me. She had to rest but she would listen and watch and protect me.
She was part of me now.
She’s still part of me. And I am part of her.
A feral smile stretches across our lips.
We tilt our head at Peter’s taunt and the dark shadows rush through us, shivering like blood in our veins. They swirl over our vision, dimming it beautifully. Peter’s shadows used to affect Belle. They would turn her golden irises to coal. But our shadows are stronger than his, and Peter recognizes the sharp obsidian.
“Imani?” Peter’s face blanches and he stumbles backward.
“You didn’t recognize me before, but…” We lithely prowl forward. “I’ve been searching for you a very long time, Ezryn.”
Ezryn…
A commotion draws our attention back to the shoreline where Wraith brandishes a spear with a bloodstained tip against an enormous man with an equally impressive knife. Bones approaches the giant from the right with a knife in both hands.
If their opponent is worried, he doesn’t show it.
In a flash of frenzied shadow, Peter takes advantage of this distraction and swoops across the sand to collect Paris before vanishing into the Neverwood.
The coward has abandoned his friends. How typical.
We smile. He thinks there is a safe place on this island where he can hide. There’s not.
Amid the splashes, grunts of pain, and the violent roars that burst between lips when adrenaline meets fear and blade meets blade, we hear a shrill shriek followed by claws gouging sand. A ferocious mermaid joins the fray, slashing at Wraith’s middle and going for the tendons in his legs, gnashing her sharp teeth at him. If she catches him, he’ll be hers.
“Ava!” a deep voice calls.
A shiver runs up our back because we know that voice.
We turn to it, anticipation electric within our chest.
Dark hair raked by salt water and sea breeze with matching stubble on his jaw, sword and hook, and righteous fury. His stride never falters as he heads straight for us.
Our fingers twitch for him. We start to walk in his direction.
Wraith leaps away from the mermaid and moves to stop the man from reaching us, jabbing the sharpened, bloody wooden spear at the pirate’s heart. The pirate bats it away with his hook like Wraith is simply a child playing with a stick. And with one heavy, precise punch, Wraith’s eyes roll back into his head and he falls backward on the sand with a hard thump. His spear collapses a second later beside him.
The pirate steps over his prone form like he’s no more than a pebble.
I fight Imani for control of my body and surge toward him, bursting fully into myself, into my skin, again. “Hudson!”
The tide is low and too much sand yawns between us. I start to run to him but stumble to a stop when a wave of dizziness washes over me.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Lifeguard,” he beams, his stride broad and confident. He’s almost here. And then his smile slips and he shouts a warning. “Ava!”
There’s a whisper of movement at my ear. Strong hands grip my head and twist.
One sharp crack and I’m falling. My head bounces off the sand before finally settling. The last thing I see is the spray of sand from Hudson’s boots and the glint of his hook in the sun. The last thing I hear him scream is my name.