“Well, who the hell else would I be talking about, Peter? Exactly how many hands have you cut off?”
“You don’t know anything!” he yelled, taking a threatening step forward. “He was trying to kill me!”
“Oh, of course he was!” Wendy yelled back. “He’s a pirate, after all! That’s his one purpose in life, right? Kill Peter Pan!”
“YES!” roared Peter, his eyes beginning to glow red once more. Wendy stepped back, suddenly a little less angry and a little more afraid. “It is his one purpose in life, Wendy!” He smiled a nasty smile, the ruby fire in his eyes darkening to blood. “Unfortunately for Hook, he’s a failure and always will be!” He closed the distance between them and Wendy gasped, feeling the ledge of the precipice under the heel of her shoe. “Hook will never beat me! Never!”
“Never is an exceedingly long time, Pan.”
Wendy gasped again and Peter looked up and over her shoulder. She spun around to see Captain Hook and four members of his pirate crew stepping off of a row boat that had just pulled up alongside an old stone plank. The wind and rain had drenched the pirates and turned their faces cold. Hook looked like a phantom, pale and blue eyed, in the sable finery of a man bent on revenge in the dead of night.
Hook’s stark, cobalt gaze sparked with untold emotion as he came to stand on the platform and slowly lowered his left hand over the hilt of his sword.
Peter needed no further urging. Wendy tried to stop him. She felt disaster edging ever closer and wanted, desperately, to prevent it. “No! Peter!”
But Peter was too far gone, too angry, too torn by something inside of him. She recognized that anger, saw it in the fire that flashed in his green eyes, knew all too well the kind of pain that brought it on.
And so he leapt off of the stony outcropping and rushed the infamous pirate captain with a speed and fury that the younger Peter Pan had never known.
The two men in black met once more in battle, the first angry touch of their swords ringing out in the cavern like the lightning that crashed all around them and the thunder that caused the walls to shake and the waves that battered the ancient stones to rubble.
The other pirates were mobile immediately. Gentleman Starkey headed up the rocky crag toward Wendy, as did Smee, one pirate on either side of her. Wendy had no where to go and no dust to help her fly away. And she wasn’t at all certain of their intentions now that she’d unwittingly gone against her word and escaped the Jolly Roger.
So, she backed up against the wall and frantically searched for any sign of hope. Beyond the battling duo, two more boats navigated into the cavern from the choppy waters of the sea. Michael and John were in the middle boat, and both were bound at the ankles.
But several sudden streams of yellow, shimmering light brooked through the cavern, reflecting off of the dark water below, and Wendy looked up.
Pixies!
One of them broke off from the others, reminding Wendy of a Blue Angel, pulling away from formation to fly elsewhere. That fairy winged straight for Wendy and her eyes widened with new optimism.
“Tink!” she cried when the pixie was close enough to recognize. Tinkerbell waved hurriedly and drew closer, gathering her own pixie dust in her hands as if to share it with Wendy.
“Get the pixie!” Starkey yelled at Smee, who happened to have chosen the easier route up the rock face and was closer to Wendy. Smee clumsily reached out as Tinkerbell rushed by him, but was unsuccessful in doing anything but knocking himself off balance. Down below, the doctor of the Jolly Roger, Murphy, cringed as Smee slid a good foot or two down the slippery cliff, dislodging a dozen black pebbles that skitted to the water.
Tinkerbell swooped down toward Wendy and threw two handfulls of pixie dust in her general direction.
Tink managed to get a tiny amount in Wendy’s face before Starkey was suddenly there, his hands much faster than Smee’s, and his grip devilishly tight.
He quickly grabbed the flitting fairy from the air, turned, and hurled her across the cavern. Wendy shrieked at the treatment, hoping Tinkerbell would be all right, but had no further time to react to it, as Starkey was then turning to face her.
“You’ll be coming with me, Miss Wendy,” he told her, lowering his head to gaze at her through the tops of his dark eyes. “The Captain wishes to have a word with you.” He spoke the words in a scolding tone, as would a butler who has caught his mistress sneaking out in the middle of the night, or a headmaster who had just learned his star pupil was, in fact, cheating.
It was also a warning.
Wendy stepped back, acting before she could think. Something inside of her slid into place and locked down with a click. She closed her eyes and began thinking of anything and everything that made her happy.