“Yeah, you can’t have me,” I tack on.
“We just want to borrow her. Tell Peter to come fetch her when he’s back from his little swim.” Her voice has moved now, closer to my left in the dark.
“Not a chance, Shiner.”
“You never come quietly, do you?” She laughs, that sultriness and innuendo all over her words. “Have it your way.”
Coy yells, and another flash of lightning shows him in a fist fight with two of our attackers. Tootles raises his fists, and Nibs swings his bow out in an arc, trying to knock them back.
“Moira, run!” Coy’s voice is strained, and I can’t see him in the drenched dark.
I turn and start to scramble away, ducking low to try and avoid Nibs’s bow and Tootles’s fists. I bump into a tree, then skirt around it and keep going as another flash of lightning shows me a path through the forest. Following it, I hurry along, my feet sloshing in my shoes as I slip and slide my way deeper into the trees. A vine smacks me in the face, and I lift a hand to my aching cheek.
“Shit, that hurt.” I keep going, my ankles turning on roots as the rain continues to pound.
When I don’t hear the sounds of fighting anymore, I stop and finally turn around. I can’t see anything. Not until the lightning flashes again.
I gasp and fall back against a tree trunk when I see a woman right behind me. Long blonde hair braided into an elaborate design is swept up on top of her head, and her eyes are ringed in black paint.
“You move slower than a wounded boar.” She rolls her eyes in the last of the lightning flash, and then she grabs me, her grip strong on my forearm as she starts pulling me along with her.
“Hey! Let go!” I try to pull away, but she doesn’t let go.
She lets out a few short whistles, and I feel people converging around me. Before I can try to wrench my arm away, I’m grabbed and thrown over a shoulder.
“Hey!” I beat on the brute’s back, but he holds me with one arm barred across my legs. “Put me down!”
“At least she blocks some of the rain.” He chuckles as he carries me through the dark.
“Let’s get her back. Coy and Peter will be on our trail any second now, and we need some time with her.”
“Coy! Coy, help!” I yell as we start moving quickly through the rain, the man beneath me taking sure steps as he hauls me through the woods and along an embankment. I realize quickly that there’s no way Coy can hear me over the thunder and rain. The island is too loud, the wail of the wind and the cacophony of a billion drops of rain drowning out my cries for help, almost as if Neverland is purposely helping my kidnappers.
Hanging limply, I sputter as the water drips along my face and into my nose. I blow it out, then press my chin to the brute to keep the water from drowning me.
“Faster, the moon’s getting high.” Someone passes us, his feet slapping against the muddy ground.
For all my insistence that none of this is real, this certainly feelsreal. The uncomfortable way his shoulder is digging into my stomach, the rain turning cold and making me shiver, the steady pace of trudging through the terrain as lightning streaks overhead—it all seems real. Real enough to be deadly.
We begin moving downhill, the trees still thick around us as the brute almost loses his footing. I scream as he steadies himself,and then he has the nerve to move faster. A whiff of smoke hits my nose, and then the rain finally stops.
He leans over and puts me on my feet.
I’m finally able to breathe again, though I know my stomach is going to be sore. “What the hell?” I stare up at the giant who only gives me a goofy smile in return.
We’re in some sort of round building, the walls of polished wood and the floor hard-packed dirt that’s swept clean. It’s a large space, and furs and pillows are scattered along the curving walls. Sconces with thick candles cast light from all angles, and a cheery fire crackles at the very back of the room.
“That’s Bunk.” The woman who was speaking to Coy steps in front of me. “I’m Shiner.”
“Okay.” I wrap my arms around myself, and to my embarrassment, my teeth chatter.
“Come sit by the fire.” She takes my elbow.
I pull it away. “No.”
“You want to be cold and wet?” She raises a blonde eyebrow. Even though she’s soaked, her locks sodden and the black makeup around her eyes running down her cheeks, I can tell she’s beautiful.
“No, but I’d be warm and safe if you hadn’t taken me from Coy!” I snap, then fear starts to eat away at my edges, like a rat with a piece of cheese. “Is he okay?”
