Never, Never (24 page)

“Go on,” she said, but her voice was cold.

His heart pounded painfully in him, palms slick with sweat. “All the time I've been—desiring you, I've known you truly wanted someone else. Someone I hate with
every fiber of my being. It's always been a struggle with you. So, when I do something terrible and you walk out the door, what else am I supposed to believe?”

Tiger Lily looked away from him. He was smug; she could not answer that question, not truthfully.

“Anyway,” he said, clawing at any chance to change the subject, “we are not talking about my conquests. You know I only did those things to try to forget about you. And I never would have done if I'd believed, for a moment, that you weren't in love with Peter Pan.”

Another silence as Tiger Lily stood there, arms dangling like weights at her sides, mouth falling open.

“I'm not in love with him,” she said, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.

“You are. You're standing here in front of a man who would do anything to be with you, and you're fouling it all up for a boy.” His voice rose with the frantic panic inside of him.

“I'm going, James.” Tiger Lily took several steps toward the frozen trees, and Hook caught her by the arm.

“No,” he shouted, breath coming out in a hazy puff. “You don't get to just leave like this. You can't walk away from me because it's too hard to give me an honest answer.” He feared, for a moment, that he didn't want her honesty. He did not want to hear again that she was Peter's, that she'd always been, that the choice he'd made as a boy to stay away from her had been the right one. He did not want to hear it, but he needed to. So he searched her eyes, his own dark and desperate.

Tiger Lily looked up at the sky, which was dark and angry and rumbling.

“It's going to rain,” she said, eyes suddenly red and wet. He could hear the hoarse breathiness in her voice, certain she was on the raw edge of crying.

“Toss the rain.” Hook drew her gently in to him, fingers ghosting over her palm. She leaned into him, and his heart beat feverishly against her cheek.

Her assessment, it turned out, was correct, and the rain started to fall, cold, almost snow. It came down slowly at first, coating them lightly.

“Do you love him?” he whispered, staring down at her, not bothering to camouflage the pain etched into his face. She stepped back and looked up at him.

The rain fell harder, until fat wet drops were pounding all around them.

“Do you love him?” he asked again, louder against the downpour.

The water was soaking both of them now, and his hair stuck to his shirt. Her dress clung to her body.

“Yes,” she said so quietly that he could scarcely hear it.

“What?”

“Yes,” she screamed. “I wish I didn't, but I do.”

Hook looked away for a moment, then he grabbed her in a fit of passion.

“How? How can you love a boy? Does he kiss you?”

He brought her to him and slanted his mouth hard over hers, desperately, angrily. And he pressed her against his chest. He poured all of his frustration, passion, into her in that kiss, wishing he never had to end it. But when she grabbed at his shirt and tried to bring him closer to her, he pulled back.

“Can he touch you, Tiger Lily?”

The rain was falling in sheets now, and he could see nearly every bit of her beneath the fabric of her dress. He trailed the tip of his hook softly down the back of her neck, and slowly slid his hand down to her collarbone, stopping there, looking at her eyes. Her dark, haunted brown eyes. She made no protest, and so he let it fall farther down, until it was cupping her breast. Touching her there was
the sweetest sort of agony, and his fingertips trembled, fire lighting up his legs, his stomach, his chest, almost driving away the reminder of the Pan between them.

Her face held a mixture of pain and pleasure, and he dropped to the ground.

“Can he ever do these things to you?”

He clutched the back of her leg and brought his lips to her thigh. She drew in a sharp breath, and he could feel her shaking beneath his jaw. He kissed her again and again, until his mouth was around her hipbone. She shook harder, and he stopped. If he kissed her again, he would not be able to stop himself, would not be able to remind himself that she wasn't his. That this could not last, would maybe never go on beyond one forgotten moment of passion in the woods. Not if she still loved Peter Pan. Not if she only chose to be with him because
he
wasn't here.

So, he lingered there for a second longer, memorized the smoky-sweet taste of her skin, and then ripped himself away.

“He will never love you like I can.”

He left her standing there, quivering in the rain, and he walked back to his ship.

I
T WAS TWILIGHT IN
N
EVERLAND WHEN
H
OOK WAS
roused from his cabin. He had a sinister disposition from the earlier encounter with Tiger Lily and was scowling from the moment he opened his door. What exactly had brought him onto the deck, he was unsure, but he'd felt a humming beneath his skin, a buzzing in the air. And he had been compelled to step out onto his ship.

Upon first glance, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. It was slightly chilly and grey and quiet. No one aboard the
Main
was doing anything of note. A look of grave suspicion came over his face as he surveyed the ship. And then when he looked up into the sky, his heart jumped. Distant, a speck in the clouds, there flew Peter Pan. He thought he saw several other specks with him as well. He grinned wickedly and jabbed his hook into Smee's sleeve, catching him as he passed.

Smee toddled backward, nearly falling, which would have been unfortunate, as he likely would have been rather maimed had he slipped.

“Smee,” Hook said, voice low and brimming with excitement, “get Long Tom.”

Smee raised an eyebrow. “Long Tom, Captain? But there's no vessels about.”

Hook was thrilled enough by Peter's reemergence that he did not even berate Smee for questioning him.
Instead, he simply held out his gleaming hook toward the sky, which was darkening by the second. Smee rubbed his spectacles, then peered up into the clouds.

“Pan,” he breathed. Without another word, he ran off and gathered several of his crewmen with him to bring out the giant cannon.

“Captain!” called Daniel Thatcher after the men had spent too long with the monstrous weapon, “Long Tom is ready.”

Captain Hook marched across the deck and slid his hook down the length of the cannon. It screeched loudly, and the majority of the crewmen covered their ears with an enthusiasm they rarely displayed elsewhere.

It was dreadfully dark already, which seemed impossible. But most things in Neverland, when they had to do with Peter, seemed impossible.

“Where is he?” Hook yelled, voice muted in the strange quiet of the air.

Smee twisted his hat around in his hands and looked up at the clouds. The rest of the crew followed suit. They looked like a particularly foolish lot, all standing still, mouths gaping and staring at the sky. Then, Hook perked up. A tiny, bright yellow glow appeared in the black, bobbing and flitting about. “Look, there.”

The pirates turned a collective head.

“Pan's fairy?” Starkey asked.

Hook glowered and gave a terse nod. “They're all with her, no doubt,” Hook said.

“No doubt, sir. No doubt at all.”

“Gentlemen,” Hook said, puffing out his chest and straightening his hat and jacket, “fire.”

The crew bustled around in a chaotic moment, and the light suddenly disappeared. Hook felt a panic well up in him, and he grabbed Thatcher's shoulder.

“Do it now, Thatcher. Now. We'll lose them!”

The pirate lit the fuse on Long Tom. There was utter silence everywhere for a moment. Even the wind was tense and hushed; not a sound came from a Neverbeast on the island. Then, a thunderous boomed ripped its way through the quiet, tearing through the clouds.

The crew of the
Spanish Main
waited with bated breath, each member staring up at nothing, for nothing was precisely what they could make out in the sky. After a beat, Hook left the cannon and made his way to the gunwale, then leaned heavily over it. He was so intently focused that he could hear nothing going on around him. He shut his eyes, searching for some feeling, some indication that the Pan was dead. And yet, he found none. If anything, the air was warming slightly.

“Long Tom has failed us,” he growled, whirling around, waves of black hair flying. “Peter Pan lives.”

Smee was standing next to Hook, though he didn't even realize it until he said, “Indeed, Captain. But, what shall we do?”

“Find him, Smee. We will find the boy, and we will kill him.”

Smee nodded solemnly and Hook made his way throughout the rest of the ship, readying his men. Not a single man was left aboard; every pirate was requisitioned for the plot. So, into the black forest they went.

The woods looked particularly uninviting that night as the dark branches loomed over them. The leaves were frantic and dark-colored, fretting, crimson, black, silver, and then crimson again, and the air chilled Hook's skin. For once, however, this struck no beginnings of fear into the captain's heart. It was too filled with hatred to allow an ounce of anxiety to settle in.

There were faded, burning pictures, flashing in his head of all the things Peter had destroyed or taken from
him. Tiger Lily. His parents. Timothy. Rose, whom he'd never meet at all. Hook sped his steps, half-running.

All at once, he detected to his right a pistol being drawn. He shot his hook out and grasped Starkey by the shoulder.

“Captain, let go of me shoulder. Yer diggin' into the bone!” he gasped.

“Put back that pistol.”

“It's a boy, Captain. A Lost Boy, runnin' through the woods. Did ye not see him?”

Hook's voice was low. “We shall not slay any Lost Boys tonight. I do not wish to kill another child. And you will not either. Understand?”

Starkey winced in pain as the captain withdrew his hook from his shoulder, and he nodded and put back his pistol.

“Spread out, men,” Hook commanded. “Tonight, we
will
find Peter Pan and his Lost Boys. They cannot be far off now, not with the one running about in the woods. Should you come upon them, you return to me immediately, and do not touch Peter under any circumstances. You leave the boy to me. Understand?”

The men responded with a loud “Aye!” and, brandishing their torches and guns and swords, they rambled off into the night.

Hook commissioned Smee to accompany him and left the rest to Starkey.

Smee crackled along the leaves behind him and panted loudly.

Hook slowed a bit. “What is it, Smee?”

“Would you mind slowing down?”

At that, Hook heaved a great sigh, the night's exertion weighing down on him suddenly. “I'd stop altogether, Smee. But this boy—he compels me to move forward.”

Smee set his hand upon the captain's shoulder, a gesture so reminiscent of his mother he choked for a moment. Hook stopped.

“Is it your hand, Captain?”

“Aye. That's among them. And the crocodile. And the boy and the girl. And the woman. There's a host of things, Smee. A host.” Hook rested his head in his hand, massaging his temple.

Smee smiled at him, and though there was a thread of pity laced throughout the smile, it was not offensive or patronizing. Something about the way of Smee soothed the rage running hot in Hook's veins.

The seat he'd chosen warmed slightly underneath him, which brought him out of his thoughts. He frowned at it, as though that would prompt his strange little chair to explain itself. And then, it grew warmer and warmer, until it was alarmingly hot. He jumped up from it and stared at it accusingly.

“Smee!” he said. “This—this—”

“Mushroom.”

Indeed, it was a mushroom. But even after all these years in Neverland, Hook still felt foolish saying something so fantastical. It was simply too large and too vibrantly colored and glittering to be a piece of fungus. Nevertheless. “This, er, mushroom—it's hot. Curiously hot. Come touch it.”

Smee cocked his head in the manner of a dog and rested his fingers on it. He snatched them away fairly quickly.

“That's odd,” Smee said.

“It is, isn't it?”

Hook stretched his long fingers out to the thing, which was, even by Neverland standards, unusually large. He grasped it by its top, then, and pulled. Rather than resist, it popped directly out of the ground. Smoke began
to pour out from the stem, billowing into the air, eliciting a cough from Hook's lungs.

“A chimney,” Hook whispered. After the puff of smoke disappeared, he and Smee leaned over it. There was a soft glow coming from inside it, and the murmured sounds of children's voices.

“Where is Peter? How is it he's not back yet?” said one of them.

“He's coming. Of course he is.”

“I'm hungry.”

“You're always hungry.”

“Am not.”

“Are so.”

The conversation devolved into a scuffle. Hook set the mushroom gently back atop the chimney and stood. Then, he looked around him. There were trees encircling the place that would have looked perfectly ordinary had a passerby not known that there was a house below his feet. But, when one was privy to this information, the strange holes in the trees became obvious.

“Doors,” said Hook. He laughed. It was not a cackle or any wicked thing; it was a laugh of genuine amusement. “Look, Smee. They've each carved a separate entrance for themselves. Each boy with his own door. How like children.”

The laugh was tinged with pain, for he could not help himself thinking that it could have been him picking a tree. And he couldn't think past the sadness that he'd only recognized the voices of two Lost Boys, Tootles and Slightly. He shook his head quickly and stood taller.

Smee laughed as well, but Hook was not sure if Smee understood fully what he was laughing about.

A
tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock
, cut the laughter off.

“Do you hear that, Smee?”

Cold fear washed over Hook, and the blood drained out of his face. He'd never seen the croc this far inland.

“It sounds like a ticking, Captain.”

Hook was in an instant panic, seeing in his mind the croc's terrible jaws and dead eyes and hungry smile looking at him, thirsting for him.

“Back to the ship,” he said, and his voice was low and urgent.

“But Captain, how can we leave now? We've finally found—”

“Quiet,” he said, voice loud and metallic, despite his attempting a whisper. “Run, Smee!”

Smee ran, and the tick-tocking grew louder and louder, and Hook's heart crashed harder against his chest. There was nowhere to hide there, he knew. Nowhere that crocodile would not smell him out. Hook drew in a breath, coughing, feeling that the air was made of glass, and sprinted.

Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock.

He quickly overtook Smee, unable to worry for his crewman's safety, and when the men reached the
Spanish Main
, Hook fled to his quarters and slammed the door behind him, the sound of the clock still fresh in his head. Though he'd found Pan's hideaway, his nerves were decidedly unsoothed. The captain lay wide-eyed in his cabin, and he knew he would not sleep. The horrible sound and picture of the crocodile accompanied him to bed and remained his companion throughout the night, and he could not sleep for the terrible thoughts of clocks and scales and horrible eyes and sharp, smiling, hungry teeth.