Everland(84)

His fingers comb through my hair, his heartbeat thrumming against my own. I place my hands on his face, my palms running along his stubbled cheeks. Finally, he leans his forehead against mine. He whispers again, “Run, Gwen. Run away, and don’t you ever forget that you are always a Lost Girl.”

Burning tears streak my cheeks. “Your Lost Girl,” I say, my grief drowning in his stare.

“Well, isn’t that sweet?” Hook says. He lifts the barrel of his gun toward Pete. “Young love. Now bring me the vial, Immune, or it’ll come to an unfortunate end.”

Reluctantly, I pull away from Pete’s arms. Wet, angry, and battling the ache of defeat, I step toward Hook, his palm held out, waiting for me to give him his prize.

He grins wickedly. “Hand it over,” he says.

He’s won, and that simple fact chokes me like his fat fingers wrapped around my neck, stealing my breath. I fix my gaze on Hook’s single dark eye and shove the vial into his outstretched hand.

“That’s a good little girl.”

“I am not a little girl,” I say, tightening my jaw.

“Oh, aren’t you cute? It’s absolutely …,” Hook says, scratching his head, “darling.”

As soon as Hook wraps his fingers around the glass tube, he turns to his soldiers. “Cuff the girl and the young doctor. We’re taking the cure, the boy, and the Immune. As for Pete,” Hook says, looking Pete up and down, “kill him!”

“No!” I shout as the soldiers move on Doc and Pete. A third guard moves toward me, but Jack steps in between us. He turns his sword on the soldiers. “No, that’s not what you agreed on.”

“Plans have changed,” Hook says. “It’s time you two get an up-close tour of the Jolly—”

Another explosion erupts outside the palace, followed by a dozen more. The ground shakes, sending lanterns smashing to the ground.

“Captain!” a Marauder says, running into the courtyard, breathless. “The soldiers! They’ve abandoned their posts. The ships … they’re spooked! Phantoms, I tell you. Firing on our own men!”

“What?” Hook says.

I turn toward Jack, and he meets my stare. I nod toward the katana in his hand.

Hook regards the vial in his grip, like the wheels of a clock turning in his mind, trying to find a solution to his predicament. “No worries. We still have the cure and the little girl,” he says. “As long as we have them both, I’ll be the most powerful man in the world.”

Rage erupts within me. I must end this. I will end this … for good!

I signal to Jack. He tosses the katana, and I catch it as Hook turns his attention to me.

Thoughts of my family flood my mind. Mikey’s panicked face as he dangled over the crocodile pit. My mother’s surprised expression after being held hostage, waiting for her children to be brought to the palace to save them. The night Joanna was taken from me, and the hurt in her eyes about broken pinkie promises to never grow up. And a final thought for my father, the clinking of his tags reminding me I will never see him again.

“I am not a little girl!” I scream. Lifting the sword over my head, I slam the blade down.





Hook’s guttural scream is drowned out by the crack of thunder and the pouring of rain. I watch as his right arm, the antidote still clenched in his severed hand, one finger adorned with the skull-and-crossbones ring, falls into the crocodile pit. The coppery smell of fresh blood hangs in the air as Captain Hook falls to his knees. He tries to stop the blood with his gloved hand, but to no avail. With his teeth he rips his glove off his remaining hand and holds his bleeding stump to his chest. He stares into the dark chasm as the crunch of bones and broken glass echoes from the pit. In the distance, Big Ben chimes for the first time in a year, its clang announcing midnight in Everland.

The world around me slows. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as the Lost Boys fight off the Marauders beneath a lightning-streaked sky. As the storm rages around me, I drop the sword, sending it clattering to the wet stone. When I lift my eyes, the leader of the Marauders is staring straight at me.

Hook turns his gaze to the sky, his square jaw clenching with a grimace. Pain etches the lines on his face, but I am certain it is from more than just his arm. Trembling in the heavy rain, he turns his dark, glassy gaze toward my sword and then locks eyes with me.

“I came to England to win her for my mother,” he shouts above the roar of the rain. “For once in my life, to prove to her I’m more than just a worthless child. And now …” He scans the smoky clouds and the flames licking toward the night sky.

Hook covers his grief-stricken face with his hand. It is then I see them, the oozing blisters covering his fingers and the blackened fingernails, and I feel as if I’ve been punched in the gut. Why didn’t I see it? Consider that he, too, could be vulnerable?

“You’ve contracted the virus,” I say, hearing the shock in my voice. “All this time … this whole time your soldiers wore the masks, but you … you didn’t.”

Hook grimaces, averting his gaze. “When I discovered what I had done, when I killed nearly everyone in London, it was too late. Even for me.”

Hesitantly, I kneel and place a hand on his shoulder. As if surprised by my touch, he flinches. He stares at me with the single frightened and wide eye of a boy, a Lost Boy. Acquiring the cure to rule the world may have been his goal, but it was never his primary agenda. He was after the cure because he needed it.