Page 20 of The First Lost Boy (The Shadows of Neverland Duet #2)

Ava

Hudson and I race through the Neverwood as the overshadowed pixies descend. The farther the moon stretches over the sun, the more fevered their attacks become. The pixie dust we wear heals the scrapes, scratches, and bruises we gain along the way, but it can’t take away the panic that comes with each fairy who tries to claw us to pieces.

I pause, chest heaving, after a particularly nasty pixie collapses a few feet away. I don’t have as much dust on me as Hudson does, so it takes a little longer for what I can transfer to take effect and subdue them.

“Come here, Lifeguard,” he says, striding toward me.

He presses his body against mine, curls his arm around my back, and leans in like he might kiss me. A rush of heat flushes my skin because something in me wants him to and likes the feel of his strong body pressed against mine.

“What are you doing?” I manage to rasp.

He smirks like a devil. “Giving you some of my dust.”

“But you’ll need it.”

I feel his voice rumbling through his chest. “You’re almost out, and we’re partners on this mission. What kind of partner would I be if I didn’t replenish you?” His eyes burn with mirth and something far, far hotter.

“Something tells me you’re not just talking about pixie dust.”

His smirk stretches into a devastating smile, but the moment of levity is short-lived. A curse flies from his mouth as another round of feverish shrieks approaches. A moment later, another pixie bursts through the canopy, only to swoop back into it.

Hudson’s eyes smolder. “One day, Lifeguard, there’ll be nothing to interrupt us when we decide to save one another.”

Leaves and branches break and rain down on us.

Instinctively, I duck and cover my head, then look up to see Hudson shielding my body with his. When I meet his eyes, I see something burning in them that I don’t understand until Imani pushes a very intimate memory forward.

Breath pushes from my lungs.

My lips part.

And I remember Hudson in a very different light. One with moments of pleasure stolen by candlelight under my terms and no one else’s. I’d wanted to remember our time together so badly and forgot it all the same. But Imani remembered.

Imani remembered for me.

I press my lids shut and take a deep breath.

Is she trying to make me want her to stay? Or is this me, processing all I stand to lose if she leaves my body with my shadow?

“Ava?” Hudson rasps, looking concerned.

“I remember,” I rush to tell him.

His arm bands around my back as we slowly stand upright. “You remember what?”

“Us.”

He nods. “I didn’t realize you forgot. You had part of your shadow then, and you have all of it now.”

There is no judgment in his tone, but I hear disappointment. I don’t think he blames me for my spotty memory, but the circumstance isn’t ideal.

I wince and he tenses in silent reply as I explain. “That’s the problem, Hudson. I don’t have my shadow. Imani has it.”

His arm tightens around me. “What do you mean?”

“Pan was trying to take it from me again and Imani stopped him. She was helping me, but she has it and it’s only in me because it’s in her, I guess.” I rub my temple. “It’s complicated.”

Hudson is still. “Are you saying that if she leaves you, you’ll be without a shadow again?”

“We’re not sure,” I admit.

“We?” He searches my eyes like he might see Imani crouching in their reflection.

I nod. “I can talk to her and even see her sometimes. I see her shadows. When she takes over, I swim in a whole lake of them.”

The pirate freezes, blinking like he can’t believe what I just said. “There’s a lake of shadow inside you?”

I swallow and shift my weight, then slowly ease out of his embrace. “Yeah. I don’t know if it’s inside me or inside her, but it’s all very confusing. At first, I thought it was water; I was floating in them when she first… surfaced. It’s so weird. It’s like I’m in my body but I shrink when she takes over. I can still feel and hear and see things, but it’s like an out-of-body experience, even though I’m aware of being in my body.” I growl in frustration. “Sorry, I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t really know how to explain it.”

Hudson mutters a soft curse. “Lifeguard, we’ll figure it out.”

We .

Together.

As if it’s as much his problem as it is mine.

Like he’s saying he won’t abandon me.

I bite my lip and nod, hoping he won’t, because I already feel lost. I haven’t been able to figure anything out on my own. There’s too much at stake and too many variables to consider.

Just then, the same pixie flies out of and into the trees again, lower this time, but she hasn’t spotted us.

Hudson covers me again and when it seems clear for the moment, the cold metal of his hook bumps my chin up toward his face.

He leans in and I wonder if he’s thinking about kissing me. Just for a moment, I forget the leaves drifting around us, the fairies we’re trying to save even as they try to kill us, and the fact that Ezryn is still so far away even though Imani is here and willing to end his reign of terror – assuming we can get her close enough.

Then I almost laugh, because all I can think of is cheesy romantic action movies where something crazy is about to go down and the main characters stop to make out in the middle of the melee. I thought it was simply a movie trope until now, but I’m drawn to him. In the middle of this surreal mess, we orbit each other, both helpless to ignore one another’s pull. There’s a gravity about Hudson that I can’t seem to escape, and honestly, I don’t want to even if I could.

“What are you smiling at?” he asks, using his hook to rake a strand of glowing hair behind my ear.

I shake my head. My pride won’t let me tell him what I was thinking. His ego’s big enough without me inflating it even more. “It’s nothing.”

Leaves rustle beside us and we both turn at the noise. I expected one of our allies to have found us, or maybe one of the other overshadowed pixies. I was not expecting to face the biggest fucking Neverbird I’ve ever seen. It’s taller than Hudson and every single feature I rake over is more terrifying than the last.

The corner of its beak – the color of pumpkins rotting in the sun – is broken off in a jagged edge. It clacks his beak halves together and stalks forward one step.

Two.

Hudson slowly extends his hook. “You’re enormous.”

His voice is laced with awe, but I can hear a thread of fear in it, too.

The fact that Hudson is shaken makes fear pulse through me like blood. This pirate killed Wraith in a heartbeat without breaking a sweat the first time I met him, which Imani supplies in the form of a wisp of memory. Yet he’s bracing for what I can only assume is a fight he’s not confident he’ll win.

The Neverbird’s pupils are bone white, and they rake over us like it’s considering which one of us it wants to eat first and what part looks the most tantalizing. Its bill clacks in a rapid staccato before an ominous humming sound rumbles from its throat.

Its long, bony talons curl around a young, fallen tree as it leans toward us. The claws at their end dig in, anchoring it to the wood. Its knobby knees bend.

Under the waning light of the eclipsed sun, its green feathers look dull and sickly. Some are torn, and patches are missing. Either it’s molting, it recently lost a fight, or something is very, very wrong with it.

I ease backward and hook my fingers into Hudson’s waistband, dragging him with me.

Emboldened, the prehistoric-looking Neverbird takes a full step toward Hudson, its bill snapping a more menacing choppy rhythm. If it was unsure of us before, it’s decided we’re a worthy meal now. It flares its gangly wings.

Hudson and I stumble backward on pure instinct, fight or flight kicking in as the beast stalks forward step by menacing step.

Adrenaline trembles my hands and heart. I glance at Hudson, to the glowing-gold speckles on his side where my fingers just were. The most valuable weapon against the fairies Peter turned against us won’t work against a Neverbird.

“When I shout, I need you to run like hell, Lifeguard,” Hudson warns. “Don’t slow down or look back.”

“No!” I step closer to the pirate.

“Ava, I need you to run .”

The bird snaps its beak menacingly and stalks closer, its ravenous eyes fixed on me.

And then Imani stirs, or rather, her hunger does, and I know… Dread soaks into my skin, my stomach.

“It’s overshadowed,” I whisper.

“How do you know?” He studies the creature.

“Imani,” I admit, then turn my attention inward to the Celestial who should be helping us right about now. “This would be a great time for you to gobble up more of Ezryn’s shadows.” I feel her laughter burble up from deep inside me.

“With pleasure,” we purr.

Hudson’s back stiffens under our fingers. He fears us more than the creature whose beak would happily snap his bones and tuck them into its nest to strengthen it, savoring the sight of them as the sun bleaches them until they turn brittle like the other twigs, until new bones are brought and shoved in amongst the old.

We slither out from behind him and bend our knees. Hudson tries to stop us, but we are faster. We pounce on the hideous fowl.

The Neverbird is strong, but not stronger than we are. We wrest it to the side and listen as it squawks, crying out to its kind for help it won’t find. The fowl uses its claws to tear at us. Snaps its beak as it tries to break free of our grip.

We breathe in another of Ezryn’s shadows and feel it slip along the girl’s ribs to take its place among the others we’ve consumed. We have made our own dark nest, and we add to it just like the fowl must.

The bird shakes its feathers and limps away before stretching its damaged wings and taking flight, floundering through the sky free of Ezryn’s influence.

We hope our mother’s murderer feels the exact moment we take something else that belongs to him. We’re glad Ezryn doesn’t simply give in and surrender to us, though. We’ve come so far and waited far too long for his end to come swiftly. We would prefer to savor every last moment.

When Ezryn clouds the sky to cover our eclipse, we let him.

He is the mouse and we are the cat, and he’s the one running, hiding, frightened.

Yet still he feigns bravado and tries to act like he can best us.

In what universe would that be true?

Thunderheads build before torrents of rain wash most of the pixie dust from our body. The eclipse is still happening, but its effect is dulled.

A garbled shout claws from Hudson’s chest.

Ava abruptly shoves me under to reach him. She is still far too strong for my liking, and yet, I wouldn’t want a weaker vessel.

A hoard of overshadowed pixies appears. They tear and claw at Hudson, lifting him into the air as they drag him through the Neverwood. He sinks his hook into the bark of a nearby tree. His biceps and facial expression strain. For a few seconds, he fights their pull.

“Hudson!” I shove Imani into the murky water as I surge upward and into my skin.

Hudson grits his teeth and roars as the bark peels away and he is dragged through the air. The pixies are smart enough to avoid carrying him too close to the trees again.

“Let him go!” I scream, chasing after him. I slip on wet leaves and tumble downhill into a wide creek that wasn’t filled with rushing currents before the downpour began, landing hard on my hip against a rock. I push back up to my feet and try to make up the distance I lost when I fell. My breaths saw in and out as panic washes over me.

They’re too fast.

I’m losing them.

Losing him.

And I’m bleeding. The Neverbird clawed the hell out of my calves and thighs, but I didn’t realize the gouges were there and didn’t feel the burn of pain or the warm trickles of blood dripping down my legs until I heard Hudson’s shouts and shoved Imani back down.

I run as fast as I can, but no matter how hard I strain to make it up the next hill, I’m impeded by muddy ground, I can’t find my footing on the leaves, and I stumble over tree roots that seem determined to stop me. By the time I finally reach the top of the hill, he’s gone.

There are no paths I can see in the deluge, and I don’t know which way to run.

And then, I’m being lifted off the ground, my flesh twisting in the stern grips of a separate group of pixies. Two hold my arms, another two grip my legs, one holds up my back, and still another fists my hair as she flies.

I scream for Imani, but she waits and watches as they carry me off in the opposite direction that Hudson was taken.

Branches and brambles, leaves and vines shred my skin as the overshadowed fairies rip me through the wood until it thins as we sail closer to the shore. I smell the ocean before I hear it, feel the wind roar off the water even through the desperate sheets of rain, and blink water from my eyes, but it’s no use. Rivulets stream off my hair and head and washes into my eyes again.

Without a care for my delicate human constitution, the pixies dump me onto the sand and surround me when I try to stand and fight. Imani coils inside me, readying to strike. When she finally does, I must admit that it’s glorious. And I surrender to her entirely and let the feel of her shadows wash over me, because she erases the pain and fear I felt on that shore.

Belle and Alette may need pixie dust to chase the shadows from the fairies, but Imani can swallow those shadows whole…

We smile at the pixies as they form a wall around us. Ezryn must think we have cloaked our light and we’re keeping it hidden from him, and that by forcing enough of his shadows onto our skin we will succumb to his darkness. He doesn’t know that darkness is what we crave the most. There will never be enough to satisfy us.

So we take in all that he’s poured over the pixies and savor another succulent morsel of Ezryn’s slow, delicious demise.