Their Vicious Darling (Vicious Lost Boys #3)(32)

Smee gives me a look.

“We might need him,” I tell her.

“Doubtful.”

“I know what I’m doing! I’m no amateur, Smee.”

“Then stop acting like one,” she says.

“Fine. I’ll get him up.” I go around to his head and look down at him.

Some odd feeling comes across my chest. It’s the same feeling I get when I spot land from the bow of my ship.

Excitement.

Excitement to murder him, no doubt.

I hook him beneath the arms and drag him back leaving a trail of blood.

Smee follows and watches me struggle with his weight. He’s all solid muscle, corded with it from shoulder to bicep to forearms. Thick veins run over his tattooed hands.

I imagine what he must look like shirtless and immediately regret the thought.

Shirtless with my blade protruding from his ribs.

That’s more like it.

I drag him to one of the spare rooms at the end of the hall and kick the door in. There’s a single bed shoved into the corner, a desk and a dresser. When I built this house, I included several spare rooms despite having no plans for guests.

The room smells stale and dust swirls in the faint ray of moonlight.

Smee lets me struggle with him a little more before she finally grabs him by the legs and helps me hoist him into the bed. The mattress dips, the springs creak.

The Crocodile is in my home, in my bed.

I swallow bile and my eye starts twitching.

“Now what?” Smee asks.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“We really tending to him?”

Why did he come here?

Why to me of all people? Is this another game? Arrive on my doorstep pretending to be injured so he can slither into the shadows and ambush me when I least expect it?

The Crocodile may be ruthless, but he has no qualms about being brutal in the daylight.

No, I think if he wanted to kill me, he would do it out in the open.

“Find out how badly he’s injured,” I tell Smee.

“And if it’s fixable?”

I lick my lips, my mouth dry. “We should keep him alive.”

She wraps a hand around her hip and tilts her head, watching me with that deep wariness that only Smee can get away with. “I don’t like this, Jas.”

I stagger back into the wall and slouch against it, sighing loudly. “To be frank, Smee, I don’t either.”

She nods at me and then gets to work.





18





WINNIE


“I do not have the Death Shadow.”

I’m sitting on Pan’s bed, leaning against the headboard, my knees drawn to my chest. I feel like a little girl again, terrified about having the flu. I always hated throwing up and my stomach had been in knots, my body burning up and trembling. I knew it was inevitable, but still I denied it was happening.

Until it did.

“Darling,” Pan says.

“There must be a mistake.”

“There isn’t. I watched it come out and I watched it take over.”

“And? What did it do?”

His brows draw together in a concerned frown.

I’m covered in blood, so I guess it was bad. But the look he’s giving me has me wondering if there is something worse than bad.

“What happened?” I ask.

He lets out a breath and then tells me everything.





I yank his door open and race up the stairs.

“Darling,” he calls.

“No. I did not do that.”

“Darling, wait.” There is a ring of command in his words, but I ignore him and take the stairs up two at a time. I don’t know what I intend to do once I’m at ground level, but I’ll figure it out.

“I’m going to go to town and prove to you that it’s not true,” I tell him.

“You will do no such thing.”

“Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe the twins were fucking with you.”

“Darling.”

I step out of the tomb and follow the hall to the loft. Vane is there with the twins. The twins are playing a card game and drinking. Vane is reading in one of the leather chairs.

They all look up when we enter and Vane’s eyes narrow when he takes in the sight of me.

“Why is she covered in blood?”

I’m about to tell him the ridiculous theory Pan has when something shifts at the center of me.

It’s something I’ve felt several times since I woke up in my bed earlier.

A dark thing unfurls inside of me and just like with the wolf, I swear I can hear or sense its intent.

I am here, it says.

The pressure dips in the loft. I’m cold and hot at the same time, ears ringing.

There is no way in hell I somehow, mysteriously, magically took on the Neverland Death Shadow.

There really must be some kind of explanation.

Vane stalks up to me and towers over me, purposefully using his size to dominate me.

That dark thing takes notice and excitement pools in my gut.

“Start fucking talking, Darling.”

“Vane,” Pan says in warning. “You really don’t—”

I smack Vane across the face.

The sound is loud in the stillness of the loft.