He takes it without a word.
“Murderer!” I beat on his chest, pummeling him as I sob, my heart cracking all over and tears seeping up through the fractures. “You fucking pirate asshole!” I keep hitting him, my fists bouncing off, my heart still broken. Until my arms tire, until I can barely breathe from the weight of grief, until I have to lean on him.
“Are you done, lass?” he asks.
“I’ll never be done hating you,” I spit back at him.
Faster than an adder, he reaches behind me and grabs a fistful of my hair, then leans me back until I need to hold onto him to stay on my feet. Little pinpricks of pain race across my scalp, and he keeps his grip rough and steady.
“I don’t care if you hate me.”
“Let me go!” I yelp when he shakes me, and I have to grab onto him even harder.
His face is only inches from mine, his gaze boring into me even though I can’t see his eyes. “You’re upset. I understand that. But you’re also in a world of shit right up to your perfect tits at the moment, and you don’t even know it. Now you’re going to comealong with me to the ship, and you aren’t going to do anything stupid like try to escape. Have I made myself clear?”
Hatred, the kind that burns you inside and out, bubbles in me like lava. I’ve never felt this level of rage before, never wanted to gouge out someone’s eyes or burn their house down with them in it. But now I do. Now I know what that feels like. Thanks to him.
“Answer me,” he growls.
“Clear.” I chew the word and spit it out.
“Good. Now that you’ve gotten all that out of your system, it’s incumbent on me to warn you that if you strike me like that again, I won’t be responsible for what I do to you afterwards. Am I understood?” He leans me even farther back, his other hand going to my hip and yanking me against him until his arms are the only thing holding me up. “I asked you if you understood me, lass?”
“I understand,” I say through gritted teeth.
He straightens up and puts me on my feet. “Glad we got all that hashed out. Come on.” He takes my elbow and pulls me with him through the trees.
There’s nothing I can do. My tears continue to fall as he marches me along. I’m caught. Coy’s dead. I can still see the surprise on his face whenever I close my eyes, and my god, it hurts. It hurts so bad that I wonder if there’s a knife in my chest just like his.
“Down.” The pirate yanks me to the ground.
I can’t see, my eyes blurry with tears and the full moon shedding only a little light under the green canopy above us. Not that it matters. But then I hear something. Awhoop-whoopnoise. That’s when I catch movement in the trees.
“Fuck!” The pirate covers me with his body as something screeches right over our heads.
Once the noise stops, he pulls his pistol from its holster.
I want to ask him what’s wrong, what the creature is. But I don’t. I silently hope that it carries him away and drops him in the sea where he can drown.
He gets to his knees, his gaze above us. “Stay down, lass. It’s a bat. A big bastard, too. Out for blood.” He pulls a short rod from the side of his gun, loads some powder and a ball into the barrel, then tamps it down. His movements are fluid and easy, even in the dark. This isn’t his first rodeo. Of course it isn’t. He’s a pirate. A murderer. And he’s a crew member on the ship of the worst of the worst—Captain Hook.
“I hope it eats you.” I voice my thoughts, even if it might get me a smack or worse.
He smirks down at me. “Not me, lass. I’m too big for it to carry off. But you … Well, you’d make a fine meal for its brood up in the Silver Mountains.”
I shiver and wrap my arms around myself.
“Now keep quiet.” He aims the pistol above us.
I curl into a ball, trying to make myself small so the bat can’t grab me. A high-pitched screech slashes through the night, and I gasp at how close it is.
“Easy, lass.” The pirate puts his other hand on my shoulder.
I go to shrug him off, but I hear thatwhoop-whoopagain, and I freeze.
“There you are.” The pirate fires, the sound loud in my ears. I cower, covering my head with my hands as his steady pressure remains on my shoulder.
A thump follows soon after, then a hair-raising shriek that dies off to a hiss and then nothing. The bat lies only a few feet away, its wings spread wide and its body a thick black mass that looks velvety in the dappled moonglow. Impossibly huge, it shudders and lies still.
