Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,111

ye, however.”

He began to pull the trigger—

Wendy screamed.

“Wendy!” Peter cried, catching sight of her. “Blackguard! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare lay a finger on her!”

“Valentine, lower your weapon,” Hook ordered, joining the group with solid, sure smacks of his bootheels. “Miss Darling! Isn’t this a nice surprise. Now you can witness my triumph—and Peter Pan’s utter defeat. I was just enjoying one last bout with my old nemesis here before getting on with things.”

“Defeat? Why, you old codfish, you…”

Hook ignored him.

“Valentine? Adjust the machine—to the limit, please.”

The pirate grinned. Keeping the gun trained on Wendy with his right hand, he reached out his left to a greasy golden knob on the cage. Peter’s shadow shivered and shrank and expanded in dismay, knowing what was to come.

The pirate spun the knob all the way to the left.

The shadow snapped into a thousand quivering tendrils of pain. It vibrated and shook and trembled so fiercely that the air around it turned black. A strange not-noise—the opposite of noise?—filled the air as it screamed, almost breaking Wendy’s eardrums.

Peter fell to the deck, unconscious.

Tinker Bell jingle-screamed.

“And that,” Hook said with a smile, “is the end of Peter Pan.”

The few remaining pirates on the Jolly Roger surrounded Wendy, Tinker Bell, and the prone form of Peter lying on the ground.

“SURRENDER!” Hook bellowed toward the shore. “Lost Boys, we have your Peter Pan!”

The fighting paused as both pirate and Lost Boy alike stopped to figure out what the captain was shouting. It was hard to hear over the waves and wind.

“I have him!” Hook gestured dramatically at Peter—whom no one could see, hidden as he was on the deck behind the railing—and his shadow in the cage, which made no real sense if you didn’t know what you were looking at beforehand.

“I have Peter Pan!” he tried again.

Nothing. Those on the beach shrugged and looked at each other in confusion.

Frustrated at the lack of response on shore, Hook reached down and grabbed Peter’s shirt, holding him aloft and shaking him so all could see. The boy sagged like a badly made scarecrow, pale and limp.

It was a shocking display.

After all, Peter really was just a boy, and Hook was not a small man. The pirate had no trouble at all tossing his unconscious body about. The strangeness of it—of him manhandling the usually energetic and scrappy Pan—must have gotten even to Hook. His face slipped for just a moment in wonder, as if he was thinking, “This is all of it? This is my prize?” And maybe there was just a touch of disappointment, like that of a child who has finally and triumphantly caught a dragonfly, only to open his hands and realize he has killed it in the process.

On the beach there were collective wails and gasps. Even the pirates seemed a little surprised. Wendy was pretty sure she saw Zane blink and gawp before rousing himself and grabbing Cubby, thrusting the boy’s hands behind his back. Then the rest of the pirates rounded up the dejected Lost Boys with exaggerated movements, ropes, and whips.

Hook seemed to get over whatever momentary lapse of joy he had experienced and now leered and grinned and pranced about, dropping Peter’s body into Valentine’s waiting arms.

“That’s right,” the captain chortled. “Get them all—it’s over now, over forever!”

The pirates tied the Lost Boys into a kind of chain and forced them onto the skiffs.

Thorn, aloft and uncaptured, jingled—but it was untranslatable, even for Wendy.

Wendy looked at her shadow. She was wrapped around Peter’s, trying to comfort or free him—with little effect. Tinker Bell tried to wrap herself around Peter’s flesh and blood body; Valentine kept waving her away.

Wendy Darling didn’t normally consider herself someone who surveyed a situation, immediately understood what was going on, and then reacted in a timely and appropriate manner. She was a dreamy, thoughtful girl, slow to decide and act.

But a week was a long time in Never Land.

Without bothering to warn her, Wendy grabbed Tinker Bell and took off.

The little fairy fought and bit and scratched and made noises that were far more terrifying than jingles. Wendy kept her fist shut tight.

Did she feel like a coward, bombing away from the pirate ship like a bee martin after its prey? Not really. Soon the ship would be full of pirates and weapons and guns, and Hook’s attention would inevitably turn to her. It was only while he was gloating that she had a chance to escape—and from the belated pop pop pop sounds