Never, Never (17 page)

This hook, this blasted hook. It was Pan's fault, all of this. Tiger Lily might never come back to see him, and it was the doing of the Pan. So, for the captain, waiting and baiting the boy was no longer enough. He would feed the wickedest part of him and become wholly the captain of the pirate vessel. And he would seek Pan out for himself and slice him open with this hook, and then who would be the cursed one?

James stepped out into the cold twilight and glowered at any who passed. Finally, Smee stopped in front of him and questioned, “Captain?”

James thrust out his hook, moonlight glinting off the steel. “No, Smee. Not just ‘Captain.' Not anymore. Call me Captain Hook.”

C
APTAIN
H
OOK STRODE ACROSS THE DECK, EACH
step taken with terrible purpose.

“Hoist the mainsail,” he growled, aware now exactly what it meant.

Noodler and Daniel Thatcher set to tugging on the rope, raising the sail, and Bill Jukes raised his eyebrows and stopped beside the captain.

“Now, sir?” Jukes said, staring up at the inky color dripping down from the sky into the water. Night was falling, and fast.

Hook flared his nostrils and stepped up very close to Jukes, breathing in his face and pressing his hook hard against the man's chest.

“Do not question me,” he snarled, and Jukes narrowed his eyes, but did as the captain said, slowly lumbering toward the others.

Hook leaned out over the ship, glaring at the open sea, and Starkey leaned next to him. But where Starkey looked cool and collected, Hook looked as though he was ready to skewer any who dared come too close to him.

“Where are we headed, Captain?”

Hook pointed out across the ocean at a tiny vessel that, from their vantage point, looked like a speck.

“Do ye remember what happened last time we encountered a boat?” Starkey said, setting his mouth into a hard line.

“Absolutely,” he replied, a menacing glint in his eye.

Starkey looked at him and shook his head in a small, but noticeable, motion.

“You have an objection?” Hook asked, voice low and dangerous.

Starkey hesitated, then stepped back away from the captain. “No, sir. Sail away.”

Hook sneered. “Thank you for your permission.”

Starkey bit his cheek, looking somewhat sour, and his nose twitched in irritation before he joined the rest of the crew in their preparations.

Hook frowned at that, keeping his gaze trained on Starkey as his first mate moved quickly, fuming, across the deck. That little twitch was a familiar gesture to the captain. He'd seen it a hundred times before, when he was young, and his father was frustrated at him.

But he forced his face away from the pirate ghost of someone long gone and focused his attention instead on the dark and angry sea. The
Spanish Main
moved faster than any aboard had ever seen it move, fairly flying across the water. Hook paced powerfully back and forth, eyeing the horizon with a restrained rabidity in his eyes.

“Bring out Long Tom,” he said, and sneered.

Smee, who was busying himself with inane little things around the ship, stopped and dropped open his jaw. “Truly, Captain?”

Hook whirled toward him, fire in his eyes, telling himself again and again that this decision was the right one, that it was not driven by insanity, that this was the role he was born to fill. “Why does everyone feel the need to question me tonight?”

Smee shrank back and scuttled off toward the ship's intimidating, but little-used, cannon.

They closed quickly in on the distant, unfamiliar ship, and Hook curled his lips cruelly. Pan had brought yet another pirate ship to the Never Sea, one that looked nearly the same as all the others he'd ever seen on the horizon. Only the color of its flag, bright red, differentiated it at all. For being a powerful enough dreamer to imagine the whole of Neverland into existence, Peter was sorely lacking in creativity in regards to the dreams of others he allowed into this place.

Before the other vessel had a chance to fire, Hook sent the order. A giant blast perforated the silence, and Hook drew his sword. The wood in the enemy ship cracked as a giant hole appeared in its side.

“Draw your swords and bring out the guns, boys!”

His crew did as he commanded and armed themselves. Then, with a ferocity none of the crewman had ever seen, he sprang to action, hurtling himself onto the other boat. The rest of his pirates followed suit, and aboard the vessel, there was a terrible flurry of activity. Shots rang out and blades clanged against one another, little droplets of blood spattering here and there on the old wood, creating chaos in the air.

All the while, Hook plunged forward, smiling conspiratorially at his new fellow, Daniel Thatcher, who was quite skilled with a weapon. His hat and jacket and hair were marvelously in place, and when he reached the captain, who was quite an unsavory sort of man, even for a pirate, Hook paused in front of him. The man was large and smelled like spoiled meat—and he was covered in a layer of grime it would take several baths to scrape off. Between them, there was a strained silence in the midst of the cacophony. The other fellow flared his cavernous
nostrils, bared his black and yellow teeth, and simply stared at Hook and his horrible claw.

“Do you wish to surrender the contents of your vessel?”

Hook chose to ask him thus, because he deemed it good form.

“I do not,” the other captain hissed.

“That's unfortunate for you, because I wish to have them.”

Something rumbled from deep within his opponent's chest, and the man rushed toward Hook, flashing his mammoth blade. Hook smiled and stepped forward to meet him. Hook clashed swords with the man, glad that he was capable with his left. The blades clanged against each other over and over, and Hook lashed out with his shining claw. It was not as easy to use as he had hoped, and the sheer weight of it propelled him forward. It stuck into the wood of the ship, and Hook yanked back, eyes large, pulse racing, pulling at it once, twice, a third time. A sweat broke out on his face and he yanked harder, fresh desperation washing over him in a heavy wave. The other captain ran at him, and Hook finally freed himself an instant before he was met with a blade.

Quite on accident, when he pulled it out, it flew farther than Hook intended it, and it connected with the other unfortunate captain's throat. Blood sprayed everywhere from his jugular, little droplets clinging to Hook's face. He winced and stepped backward once, then wiped it from himself. He did not bat an eye and pretended that the stroke had been intentional.

He was pure steel, unaffected by the brutal death, or so he told himself. There was, in reality, a deep and instant remorse rolling slowly around in him, the kind that manifested itself in a queasy terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. But, on the outside, he looked only the
cold captain. And he stood above his felled foe and yelled out over the ship: “Men!”

The activity came to a grinding halt. “The vessel is won!”

The few bedraggled men who were left from his opponent's crew stood, blinking, or sat with their heads bowed and tired and bleeding. Hook's men cheered and set about plundering the ship, loading their arms with gold and weaponry and all the colors of gemstones that could be imagined.

“You!” he called to the other ship's survivors. “You will sail across the sea in this pile of wooden excrement, and you will tell all my name.”

“What is your name?” one small man said, shaking violently now, skin covered in blood and nearly drained of color.

“My name is Captain Hook.”

Hook cocked his head, then, hearing a strange sound, that
tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock
. It was a sound he hadn't heard since Pan had thrown his hand to the crocodile. He turned toward the edge of the ship, heart
thump-thumping
, pulse in his ears, until he wasn't entirely sure which rhythm was his heart and which was the clock. Hook shrank bank immediately after reaching the edge, scrambling to the middle of the deck, hand fisted and shaking and digging into the folds of his coat. Waiting below, he saw nothing but a shadow beneath the water and a pair of eyes sticking out from it. Those eyes, those cold, hungry eyes that somehow seemed to be staring straight into him, asking him for another bite. He swallowed, though he swore dust coated his mouth. And, trembling, he whipped around and vacated the ship, running to the safety of the
Spanish Main
, shutting his eyes when he reached the door of his cabin and leaning against it, trying to displace the terrible
face from his mind. His crew followed him, arms full of treasure and the like, back to the ship.

One of the crewmen, Hook did not know who, backed the ship slowly away from the enemy vessel, and Hook pulled on the handle to his door, needing desperately to be in his room, in his bed, beneath the covers.

But, when he reached his bed, no sooner had he sat and removed his boots, than he heard a powerful knocking. He ignored it and removed his hat and jacket. And then again. Darkness flooded his face.

“Come in,” he said in a low voice.

Starkey walked into the room, and Hook frowned.

“Captain.”

“Starkey,” Hook said, making no effort to conceal his displeasure at the other man's presence.

Starkey did not look afraid or even awkward. Hook felt himself get a bit smaller under the man's glare. But, he puffed up his chest.

“Why have you come to my quarters? Why are you not joining the revelry with the others?”

“Why do you not join?” Starkey's voice was even, his eyes appraising. There was hard disapproval in his eyes.

Hook clenched his jaw, instantly young again, as he often seemed to be under Starkey's scrutiny. He shook his head, ground his teeth against one another. He was taken aback, and hoped immediately that none of that was showing.

“Who are you to challenge me?” he said, recoiling, shrinking, furrowing his brow.

“My station matters not, Captain Hook.”

Hook shook his head once more, tersely, as though that would rid him of his regression into childhood. He hardened his face and stared at Starkey, nostrils flared. “Is that so?”

“I mean no disrespect and I mean no mutiny. But, I do mean to be telling ye that, should ye keep on like this, the
Spanish Main
is done for.”

“How do you mean?” Hook struggled to keep command of the conversation, but he was frustratingly engaged in whatever Starkey had to say.

Starkey rose taller, lines on his forehead deepening. “Captain, since you've taken this vessel, you've spent a great deal of time holed away, isolated from the crew. Just when ye get me believin' you're taking real charge, ye come back here again while we be celebratin'.”

“What business is it of yours how I choose to celebrate?”

“Because, I sense the change in you, sir, and I know ye be planning to plunder and pillage every vessel in the sea. We can't be making enemies all over Neverland if we haven't a captain to lead us.”

Hook rose from the bed and closed the distance between himself and the other man, distress and rage in his voice absolutely evident. “You presume to tell me how to run my own vessel? And you insinuate that I behave in a manner unfit for a captain?”

“No insinuatin', sir. Tellin'.” And there again, a nose twitch, and a flash of his father. Hook paled, just slightly. Then, overcome with hot fury, he brandished the hook in Starkey's face.

“How dare you. I ought to rip you up here and now.”

Starkey did not step back, did not deflate or shrink at all. He stood, unblinking, a mite taller, even, than Hook, and quite a bit broader, and looked over him.

Hook was shaking with anger, and, if he admitted the truth to himself, fear. “I will not stand for my men speaking to their captain this way.”

“Then be a captain, sir.”

Starkey turned away from him, exposing his back to the potential wrath of the hook, and made for the door. Hook did not even consider plunging the steel into the man, but pretended thus nonetheless. He did consider stopping Starkey and threatening him with all sorts of dreadful things, but ultimately decided against it. Instead, he sat back on his bed, and said quietly, coldly, “Starkey?”

Starkey stopped before opening the door, and turned. “Captain?”

“Do not ever speak to me in such a way again.”

Starkey nodded and vacated the cabin.

Hook sat, blinking silently for a while, considering. Starkey was wrong. He was. Hook insisted this to himself in the same way he'd insisted it to himself when he was a child and he'd been scolded for something, whether just or unjust. He hated feeling like this around his own first mate—small, childish, vulnerable. But he'd made Starkey this way, hadn't he?

As much as he hated to admit it, perhaps Starkey was right. Perhaps to truly become Hook, to truly be worthy of captaining the
Spanish Main
, he needed to be more than a plunderer and pillager and murderer. And, though he hated to admit this even more, somewhere in the deep, dark, hidden parts of him, he wanted Starkey to be right, and to be pleased.

He swung his hook around in the air, feeling the weight of it, and took a long look at the iron, noting the dried blood encrusted upon it. It was the intermingled blood of several men. He was overcome with disgusting guilt, not only for murdering a score of men, but for refusing to commit to the captainship that was his responsibility. He let that wash over him for a while, until the silence was heavier than the revelry outside. He pulled on his boots again, and put on his jacket and hat. Then, he took out a napkin, and cleaned his hook until it shone.