Unhooked(58)

I make up my mind to follow the noise, and begin to inch my way forward. I don’t know how long I’ve been moving through the dark when I come up against a wall—a dead end. The screams haven’t come for a few minutes, and I have the sickening feeling I’m lost.

“Who’s there?” A voice comes out of the darkness and stops me cold. A soft scuttling sounds at my right, and then the voice speaks again with an urgency that conveys fear as much as the demand itself. “I can hear you breathin’. I know you’re there.”

I recognize that voice. “Will?” I feel for a space in the wall, something that would explain where the voice is coming from.

There’s no answer at first, and then, cautiously, “Who’s that?”

I move toward the sound again, following the wall until I come to a small opening, just big enough for my arm to fit into. “It’s me. Gwen.”

“Gwen?” I hear him shuffle toward me, and then I feel the surprising warmth of a human hand touching mine. “What are you doing here?” He does not sound overly happy, but considering it’s Will, I’m not really surprised.

“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly.

“Your friend Pan didn’t send you?” His sarcasm is palpable.

“No.” I grasp his hand firmly. “He didn’t. He doesn’t know I’m here.” Wherever here is. “At least I hope he doesn’t.” Because after what I saw him do to Olivia, I’m in no hurry to see him again.

The moan comes out of the darkness again, this time closer than ever before, and the complete desolation in it makes my blood go cold.

“What is that? Is one of the boys hurt?”

Before he can answer, the darkness goes blindingly white.

“Good. You have found them.” Fiona’s voice comes from the source of the light. “You do not have much time.”

I see then what I’d felt in the darkness. Will’s face looks out at me from a narrow space between jagged rocks that both shoot up from the floor and hang down from the ceiling of the cave to create a cage. It looks like they’re trapped in the jaws of some huge stone beast.

The familiar moan comes again, a soul-chilling sound of pain that has me peering through one of the narrow openings. In the darkness of their cell, I can just make out the Captain on the floor. He’s curled into himself and writhing as though he’s in extraordinary pain.

“Is he hurt?” He doesn’t seem to be bleeding, but I can’t be sure.

“No more than he ever is,” William says.

But Will is hurt. His arm has been tied to his body with a sling made from his own shirt. There’s still blood seeping through the soiled material. Peeking out from the edges of the bandage on his other arm, the one he had back on the ship, a deadly black line creeps up toward his elbow.

When I look up at him, his jaw goes tight, and he covers the bandaged arm with the one in the sling, as though he knows I understand.

I look away as the Captain moans again. “Maybe you should try to wake him?” I say, chancing a glance up at Will.

“Be my guest,” Will says darkly. “Last time I tried to bring him out of it, he nearly took off me head. Bloody wicked left hook he has. Best to let it pass on its own.”

But whatever it is doesn’t seem to be passing. Even with our talking, even with Fiona’s light, the Captain hasn’t stirred. His skin is sallow and slick with sweat, and the sleeve of his left arm flops listlessly over him in an empty embrace. He no longer looks like the cold, buttoned-up Captain I’m used to. He looks younger and much more human than I’ve ever seen him.

“What’s wrong with him?”

Will narrows his eyes at me. “And I should tell you, when it’s your fault we’re in this bloody awful mess?”

“It’s not exactly like he was honest with me,” I say, but I can’t quite dismiss my guilt.

Will staggers a bit as he steps forward, his bruised face again illuminated by a beam of light. “He was as honest as the likes of you deserved.”

“The likes of me?” I blink, outrage stiffening my spine.

“Yes. You,” he says, poking a grime-covered finger sharply into my chest. “Double-crossing little—”

“I saved his life,” I cut in.

“Enough!” Fiona’s voice echoes through the darkness around the halo of her light. “We do not have time for this.” Impatience flares in her eyes.

I turn to her. “Why did you bring me here?”

Fiona cocks her head at an unnatural angle and glares at me. It’s a strangely inhuman movement that has me taking a step back. “Did you not call me? Have you not made your choice?”

“This isn’t what I meant,” I insist. “I needed to get Olivia away from Pan.”

“It is too late for her,” Fiona says simply.

“No. Take me back. Now.”

Fiona’s lip curls to expose the sharp tips of her teeth. “If you have any hope of saving your human friend, or your own miserable existence, there is only one path for you now. It does not run through Pan.”

“I need to go back,” I demand.

But before I can finish, the light around Fiona flickers, and we are once more plunged into darkness. I hear Will’s panicked gasp, his frantic shuffling as the air goes heavy with the smell of dampness and decay. The skittering hum of the Dark Ones is still a ways off, but the sound is growing, coming closer with each second that passes. If she leaves us here, in the darkness, they’ll find us.