Stars (Wendy Darling #1)(96)
“Leave us alone!” she screamed into the wind. “If you love me, then you will leave us alone!”
Peter’s voice swirled down from above, moving so fast, Wendy couldn’t be sure exactly where it was coming from. “You know I can’t do that.” There was laughter, rising into hysterics. “You thought . . . you thought that you could escape me?”
A funnel of air pushed past her face. He was close. “Michael, lie down in the boat and cover your eyes. Do as I say,” she whispered. The waves around the boat were growing larger now, each one more powerful than the next, coming from some unknown shift in their pattern. They began spilling over the side, sloshing the hull, filling the bottom. The boat was pitching from side to side, pitiless gravity taking its toll, the small boat lingering on each pitch before violently bursting upward. Wendy stumbled, falling to her knees before righting herself and pushing her soaked hair out of her eyes.
“COME ON!” she screamed into the air, tired of waiting, tired of being afraid, anger rolling off her with beads of rain. “I’m RIGHT HERE!”
But there wasn’t a sound, except for the rain, which finally slowed to a drizzle.
“COME AND GET ME, PETER PAN!” she screamed, her legs straddling her little brother, who was curled at her feet, the water lapping at his face as he cried with his hands covering his eyes. She waited a moment, watching as the waves grew larger, engulfing the tip of the boat, unrelenting as they pounded the wood. It hadn’t occurred to her that they might drown. Michael’s sobs were becoming hysterical, and without looking down, she knelt, reaching out one hand to touch his hair.
Lightning flashed, and she saw him, lunging for her, the handsome boy with the emerald eyes. She swung the oar as hard as she could, and it caught him on the side of the head. He tumbled into the water with a roar. Wendy looked over the side, and that’s when the boat overturned, flipping so fast that there was only water, and Wendy knew they were dead.
She could feel the saltwater rushing into her lungs, all around her, salt in her eyes, the callous crashing of the waves pounding and spinning her under the surface. Lightning cracked above and she saw the flash of a fin underneath her, the flick of a sharp tail. She gasped and kicked, her arm,s clawing, her dress all around her, drowning her. With a loud scream, she broke the surface.
“MICHAEL! MICHAEL! MICHAEL!” She couldn’t see anything but she was screaming, screaming his name, hoping that the water would take her before she would see her brother drown. A head slowly rose up in the water before her, dripping red hair, bloodred in the night, wide eyes that streamed navy tears. Terrifying, a monster. Peter stared silently at her for a moment before his hands wrapped around her throat.
“Peter! Please!” She struggled to breathe.
He began sobbing. “I love you! Why are you doing this? Why can’t you love me? It could be . . . so . . . easy.”
Her ragged breaths were being choked out of her as she struggled to free his hands from her throat. “Peter . . . I can’t breathe.”
“Nor can I,” he whispered. “Not without you.” His hands tightened.
Stars exploded in her vision, but just before she caved to the darkness, she saw a flash of blond hair in the water. Michael. She brought both of her legs up and slammed them hard into Peter’s stomach. He gasped, and his grip loosened. There was a loud rush of water, and suddenly, a rogue wave flung the boat hard into them both, cracking against both of their heads and pushing them underwater, momentarily freeing Wendy from Peter’s grasp. A strange sound filled the water, a throbbing pulse, the hum of something that came from above. The waves were violent now, folding in on themselves again and again as they pitched Wendy about, her body churning in the waves like a feather.
A small pale hand brushed Wendy’s leg, and she grabbed onto Michael, yanking him up and into her arms. Kicking as hard as she could, Wendy sputtered to the surface again. Just as she emerged, she looked up in horror to see a large wave crowning before her, higher than she had seen before, and a huge black shape riding its crest. There was nothing to do but wait, to breathe in for a moment. Loud cannons echoed through the night, and Wendy heard the screams of men. Her arms clutched desperately to her brother, who wasn’t moving; he wasn’t moving. The rowboat was flung out to sea, far beyond their reach, and Michael wasn’t moving. Wendy pulled his head up, turning his face toward her. His lips were blue, his eyes closed.
“MICHAEL!” She barely had time to scream his name before the giant wave crashed down around them, pulling them close to something that pulled them down, down into an undertow, the taste of the sea so salty in her mouth, in her lungs. She cradled her brother as the water swirled around her, unsure of which way was up or down, sea and sky and death all one shade of deepest black. She felt something sharp and hard press against her leg and tried not to imagine teeth, the flesh of a shark.
Whatever was touching them was everywhere now, all around, and she held her brother’s body close to her as it pushed them together and then began tearing—no, pulling, pulling at their skin—as they rose out of the water. Wendy greedily gulped the air as they came up out of the sea. Lightning cracked against the sky, and she could see black wood, so much glossy black wood, windows and harpoons and jagged barbs, black figures that watched silently from an open deck. There were black sails snapping in the wind above them, and the voices of men, men yelling, and they were still rising up and up, out of the depths, into the air, held by—what, a net? Wendy’s fingers curled around the black netting, silver fish flapping all around them, a small shark gasping for breath beside her, its eyes rolling back in its head, its bloody mouth snapping for air. She turned to Michael, who was still and blue and cold.