Happily Ever Awkward (The H.E.A. Files, #1)(54)

“Nothing,” she insisted. “It’s just… I didn’t realize you were so… powerful.”

That confession didn’t make him feel any less uncomfortable; it just made him feel flustered on top of everything else. “Oh,” he said. “Um… oh.”

Something changed in her eyes, the way the lashes batted at him, the way her eyelids lowered, the way she gave him a sultry, sidelong look. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just marry me?”

“M-Marry you? What trick is this?”

“I promise I’d make a better Shadow Wife than a sacrifice.”

Those eyes. He needed to look away from them, but he didn’t want to.

“You know, we really should have talked about this earlier, darling. The sacrifice has already started…”

“So stop it,” she said playfully.

No, he had to look away. He had to look away immediately.

“Trust me,” he said, returning his attention to the storm dancing around his sword. “This is for the best.”

“Whose best?! Not mine!”

“Let’s not split hairs, shall we?”

Realizing the spell of her eyes had been shattered, Princess Luscious dropped all attempts at seduction and poured all her remaining effort into escaping her chains.





39



URRRs AND ARRRs


Sandwiched between parallel rows of pirates and Zombies, unable to advance or retreat, Jack and Paul understandably felt their options quickly diminishing. They scanned the cavern around them but saw nowhere they could climb and no place they could hide.

“Well, this is going to sucketh,” Jack said.

“Wait! Over there!” Paul ran to a section of the cavern wall where a rope had been tied to a cleat. The rope stretched up to the ceiling, looped through a pulley, and held aloft a huge iron chandelier covered with fat lumps of wax.

Reaching over his head, Paul grabbed the rope up high.

“Jack, come on!” he called. “Hold on!”

Jack did not need to be told twice. Keeping a wary eye on the approaching hordes, he grabbed the rope down low as Paul swung the Singing Sword. The blade easily sliced the rotted, old cordage.

The chandelier plunged.

Paul jerked into the air, soaring from the dangling end of the rope up to an overhead ledge…

…while Jack remained standing on the cavern floor. Tragically, he had taken hold of the rope below Paul’s cut. Jack stared at the limp end of rope in his hand before some instinct told him to look up, at which point he noticed the massive chandelier plummeting straight at him.

With no time to move, Jack squinted his eyes and braced himself for the sucketh.

CRASH!

The dust settled.

Somehow, amazingly, Jack was still standing. Slowly, he peeled open his eyes and realized a gap in the chandelier’s crossbeams had passed harmlessly over him.

“I don’t believe it,” he gasped. “I’m safe! I’m safe!”

Overjoyed, he turned to the right.

A wall of snarling pirates leveled a wall of gleaming sabers at him.

“Arrr!” they said.

Underjoyed, Jack spun to the left.

A wall of red-eyed Zombies bared a wall of rotting teeth at him.

“Urrr!” they said.

No-joyed, Jack glanced overhead.

Paul shrugged helplessly from the safety of his ledge.

“Sorry,” he said.

Left completely on his own and hopelessly outnumbered, Jack did the only thing he could do.

He picked a side.

Snatching the tricorn hat from the head of the nearest pirate, Jack jammed it on his own head and spun about to face the Zombies. Waving his arm at the other pirates, he growled, “Arrrr! Let’s get ’em, me hearties!”

“Arrrr?” said all the other pirates, confused by the curious dynamic that had just been introduced to the fight.

As one, the Zombies turned their teeth from Jack to include all the pirates as well.

“Urrrr!” said all the Zombies.

Too late did the pirates realize what was happening. “Wait!” cried the one who had lost his hat to Jack. “We’re not with ’im—”

But the Zombies had already begun their shambling charge, moving surprisingly quickly for shamblers. As sabers and teeth clashed, Jack slipped away amid the confusion.

Almost immediately, though, several groups of pirates and Zombies cornered Jack against the rock outside the cave. Casting his sword aside, Jack threw himself upon the irregular outcropping of stone and scrambled upward as if his life depended on it — which, of course, it did.

Paul, meanwhile, saw none of this. “Good luck, Jack,” he whispered before sprinting to the door at the top of the stairs from which the Zombies had emerged.

Here I come, he thought as he plunged into the darkness.





40



EXQUISITE TENSION


Laura struggled against the terrible tension of the torture device.

Demog watched for a while, enjoying her discomfort, then tapped a long, wooden lever so he might add to that discomfort.

A huge, ponderous weight dangled from a length of chain beside the mechanism. With the tap of the lever, the weight dropped a notch, the gears turned, and the cords and the chains around Laura’s body strained. Laura gritted her teeth against the pain, refusing to cry out.