Chapter 23: Their Vicious Darling: Chapter 22

I can’t seem to take my eyes off of him.

The fucking Crocodile in my own damn house.

His dark hair is disheveled and it makes him look like the rakish prick he is.

He’s still pale from blood loss, but his wounds are already healing.

I always knew he wasn’t human. More beast than man.

He is lying in the bed in my guest room, his arm thrown over his middle. He’s facing the ceiling so I can see the sharp outline of his profile, the slope of his nose, a slight divot right before the tip.

And then his mouth.

It is a mouth that knows how to bend things to its will.

When I drag my gaze back up, I lurch upright, finding his eyes open.

The wooden chair beneath me lets out a loud squeak and the Crocodile rolls his head my way.

“Captain,” he says, his voice thick and hoarse.

I pull my pistol, cock the hammer back and point it at him. I feel better knowing I can put a bullet in him at any moment.

Except he laughs at me. Fucking laughs.

Thankfully the laughter dissolves into a long, dry cough.

“Water, Captain.”

“Fuck off.”

He smacks his lips together. “Perhaps your blood will do then.”

There is nothing I hate more than the sight of my own blood.

And I think he knows it.

I go to the pitcher on the dresser and fill a glass.

With my back to him, the hair along my nape rises and it takes everything I have not to visibly shiver.

“I can hear your heart racing,” he says to me.

I grit my teeth and turn back to him, the glass in hand. “I’m excited about the prospect of murdering you.”

He snorts and pulls himself upright in the bed, his back against the headboard.

The sheet sloughs off his torso.

Smee removed most of his clothes to get a better look at his wounds.

We had nothing that would fit him once we were finished. The Crocodile is lean around the waist, bulky in the shoulders. My men are lazy and spoiled and pudgy.

I linger in the sight of his firm stomach and the tightly compacted muscle.

He catches me staring and lifts a brow and I shove the water in his face.

“Now start talking.” I drop back into the chair.

He brings the glass to his mouth and upends it, drinking back the liquid in three big gulps.

His Adam’s apple sinks in his throat and it makes the crocodile mouth tattooed on his neck move like a real mouth.

I swallow hard.

He breathes out with relief when the glass is empty.

I want to murder him.

I will murder him.

Just as soon as I know what’s in store for Neverland. There hasn’t been outright fighting in a very long time, but anyone worth their salt has likely felt the shift in the wind.

Neverland—the heart of the island—is shaking things up.

Glass still clutched in hand, the Crocodile eyes me.

As enemies, I suppose he wants to hold his secrets close and I sense them there, tucked behind his sharp incisors.

But he’s at my mercy, so he must give me something or I’ll put a bullet between his eyes.

“Winnie Darling has the Neverland Dark Shadow,” he says. “She killed half the Remaldi royal family in a tavern in town. The Remaldis were here to retrieve their shadow from my brother. We were invited by the fae queen who I suspect wants all of the dick on this island dead or subservient, including yours.”

Well…that was more than I bargained for. More than I thought he’d give me.

Do I believe it?

Say what you will about the Crocodile—he may be brutal, remorseless, and cruel, but he doesn’t strike me as a liar.

Too much pride for that.

So a Darling has the shadow? How the hell did that happen?

“Why did they fight you?” I ask him. “Do you not hold more allegiance to Vane than you do the royals?”

His teeth grit together and he shows the first hint of emotion since he arrived on my doorstep.

“The princess was mine,” he says. “And the Darling killed her.”

I snort. “You don’t have the capacity to love, beast.”

“Did I say ‘love’, Captain? I said she was mine. There’s a difference.”

My arm aches just below the wrist where my hook takes over.

That old, festering wound, the one that you cannot see, the one that is a ghost of memory and pain, throbs again.

“Is that what she was to you? A possession?” I hold my hook up. “Is that why you took my hand? Because I touched your ?”

“Why else?” he asks.

I run my tongue along the inside of my bottom lip, debating where I should inflict the deadly wound. In the gut would cause him the most pain. But the dick would make him howl.

“I knew you didn’t love her. She was too good for you. You just wanted to possess the pretty Darling girl and debase her with your filth.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “You saw in Wendy Darling what she wanted you to see. And that is why I liked her. Because she was smart enough to know it and cutthroat enough to make you believe it.”

The festering wound transmutes to anger and before I can think better of it, I’m lunging at him.

The sharp tine of my hook presses against his throat where his beating heart pulses beneath the pale skin. He sits perfectly still.

“Say that one more time and I’m tearing out your throat.”

He smiles up at me. “You could try.” He sneaks in beneath my guard, bringing his foot to my sternum and shoving me back.

I catch myself on the dresser and the pitcher of water teeters on its bottom.

The Crocodile gets out of bed and his trousers, now without his belt, slouch low on his hips.

“You are an uncivilized beast.”

“You think this is beastly, just wait until my time runs out.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“I don’t know, Captain. Where’s my clock? Fetch it and I’ll tell you how long you have before you find out.”

“I don’t have your clock. And if you arrived with one, I would have smashed it to pieces.”

I have hated the sound of a ticking clock ever since he took my hand.

He looks toward the open window. “Well that’s not good.”

“What? What’s not good?”

“Give me your blood, Captain.”

“Absolutely not.”

“It’s better if you volunteer it.”

I pull my pistol again and grow weary with this back and forth. I should just kill him now, be done with it. My nightmare would be over and I could finally move on.

The hammer clicks as I lock it back.

“I wouldn’t, Captain,” he warns.

“Or what?”

He darts forward. I pull the trigger. The pistol lets out a loud KAPOW and the lead ball hits the window casing across the room.

The Crocodile barrels into me. We slam against the wall together and my pistol slips from my grip as he pins me in place.

“You were really going to shoot me?” he asks, a smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

“As if there is any question that I want you dead.”

I knee him in the balls.

The air rushes out of him and he sinks to the floor, his face going red.

“Christ, Captain,” he says, his voice stilted. “If you wanted me on my knees, all you had to do was ask.”

“Will you shut up?”

“I don’t prefer it,” he answers.

Smee comes running into the room, looks at the Crocodile, then at me. “What happened?”

I run my hand through my hair, smoothing it over. “A disagreement.”

“I need blood,” the Crocodile says. “Smee, you know a thing or two about that, don’t you?”

I look over at her, hoping to spot the abject disbelief at being roped into his ruse. But there is no such thing on Smee’s face.

“You know what he is?”

“I know of what he might be.”

“And you didn’t tell me?!”

“It was a working theory, Jas.” Smee steps back into the hall and calls for one of the pirates. It’s Daniel who comes shuffling down the hall. He’s half drunk and half asleep.

Smee points to the Crocodile. “Give him your wrist.”

“I prefer them sober,” the Crocodile says.

“This isn’t a dinner menu,” I tell him.

Because Daniel knows better than to argue with orders, he goes to the Crocodile and holds out his arm.

The Crocodile’s eyes flash bright yellow.

The shiver that comes over me this time is not one I can contain.

He rises to his feet and towers over Daniel by a handful of inches. When he curls his hands around the pirate’s offered forearm, a flame ignites in my gut.

“What is he?” I ask Smee.

“He is a member of the Bone Society, isn’t that right?”

The Crocodile drags his tongue over his sharp incisors. “Maybe.”

I’ve heard of the Bone Society and because I hate ticking clocks, I automatically avoid every mention and occurrence of them.

Every clock in the Isles is created by the Society. Every single one.

“Tell him why you have to keep time,” Smee coaxes.

The Crocodile gives me a devilish grin, all sharp teeth and shining eyes. “Because when time runs out, if I have yet to have my meal, then I will turn into a beast and devour everything in my path.”

“Christ.” I lean against the dresser.

“

god is time, Captain. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. That is my prayer. Every second. Of every day.”

And then he sinks his sharp incisors into Daniel’s wrist and drinks his fill.

I can’t watch. There is a building in my chest and a heat sinking to my groin that I cannot shake.

Poor form.

I can hear my father’s voice echoing in my head. I can no longer conjure an image of his face, but I can still remember the way it felt to be on the other end of his disappointment.

Like I was less than.

Sometimes I wonder if my mother gave birth to me and my father looked down at me swaddled in her arms and said, “Poor form, Elizabeth. Poor form indeed.”

I am my own man now. But when I think of my father, I am still a boy constantly failing him.

I go to the bar at the front of the house and pour myself a generous fill of rum.

It burns going down but does nothing for the chill in my veins.

I pour a second and light a cigar and keep it captured between my teeth as I go to the balcony that overlooks the bay.

The moonlight has painted the still water silver. My ship rocks on a wave.

I want to leave.

No, that’s not quite right.

I want to .

Instead I sit in one of the hand-carved wooden chairs and balance my glass on the arm.

He finds me several minutes later and lights a cigarette and takes the chair beside me.

“Why keep it at bay?” I ask him. “Why not let it out and destroy Peter Pan on your own if that’s what you want? Take your brother home. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Maybe you were brought to Neverland by the fae queen and maybe the royals wanted the dark shadow, but you wanted your brother.”

“Is that your theory?” He regards me with a pinch of curiosity between his dark brows.

I say nothing and he says nothing and that says everything.

I realize he and I have more in common than I might have first guessed. He wants Vane back. I want Cherry. And both of them have chosen others instead of us. Perhaps because we did the same to them once upon a time.

After a stretch of silence, he says, “There is a cost.”

A cost to becoming the beast.

“What kind of cost?”

He lays his head back against the wooden chair and turns to me. But the moonlight is at his back so I’ve lost sight of his face in shadow and goosebumps lift on my arms.

“As if I would tell you my weakness, Captain.”

I blow out an exasperated breath. “Very well.”

I am acutely aware of the space between us, the space he takes up.

He is my arch nemesis, the reason I have a hook for a hand.

I want him dead.

Do I not?

“If I were you, Captain,” he says, “I would bring your sister home. Do not delay.”

I roll the cigar around my tongue, savoring the sweet tobacco.

“Did you see her?” I ask.

“I did.”

“And?”

“And something is wrong with her.”

I lurch forward. “What do you mean?”

“Beasts can sense fear and she is terrified of something.”

I’m up on my feet in an instant. “Smee!” I call.

“Captain?”

I pause in the doorway to look back at him.

“Tell Smee to be wary of my brother. Tell her to be wary of them all.”