He dipped.
He cut into Blackbeard at the knees, hurling him hard to the ground. Natalie spilled out of his arms and rolled along the dirt like a log.
The tiara flung loose from her head.
A black crow descended from the sky. It was clearly diving toward Natalie.
With its long beak, the bird scooped up the tiara and took off into the skies.
Peter circled back. He grabbed Blackbeard by the collar and hauled him to his feet. Ever so gently, Peter pressed the blade of his long knife to the pirate’s throat just below the Adam’s apple.
“Blade’s sharper than a razor, bloke. Forged and sharpened it myself. A feather-light flick o’ the wrist and your head tumbles off like a coconut falling from a palm.”
Natalie came to a dusty stop. She spit dirt out of her mouth, scraped it off her tongue. She wiped dirt from her clothes. She saw Blackbeard held at knifepoint.
Peter Freaking Pan?
Six crowmen came out of the clouds, upright and flying swiftly overhead.
“Natalie, run!” Caitlin screamed.
One crow veered away from the flock.
Natalie ran.
That lone birdman came in for a landing, touching down clean and smooth, then bursting into a swift sprint on two feet without missing a beat. He made a beeline toward Natalie.
Natalie pumped her legs hard, galloping like a stallion. She glanced back. The monstrosity was gaining on her. Getting closer.
She pumped her legs. It wasn’t even a race.
The creature was on her like a leopard on a doe. He snatched her by the arms and ground to a halt.
The crowman stank like worms.
“Lemme go!” Natalie screamed. Its claws were a vise around her arms.
The bird was about to fly off with her when a voice called out.
“Crowman!” Peter shouted as the creature secured his hold on Natalie. “I’ll behead your lord’s number-two man. And then you’ll hafta answer for it.”
“The boy’s right,” Blackbeard said. “Hang on a bit.”
Natalie sighed in relief. They were locked in a stalemate. She just got a stay of execution.
Blackbeard muttered to Peter, “Makes no difference, flyboy. When Janus kills the big sister, baby sis loses her protection. Then she’s ours.”
CHAPTER Forty-Four
Caitlin watched wide-eyed, blood-eyed, as poor Natalie was captured by the crowman and Peter held Blackbeard in a strategic standoff.
And now, the soulless creature that had been hunting her down since Glendale had come to take her life.
The crowman known as Janus dropped from the sky.
Whooooosshh.
He landed within spitting distance of Caitlin. This was the first time she had gotten a close-up look at a crowman. The experience was far from pleasant.
Janus’s body was covered in black feathers that laid together as smoothly as satin, from malformed head to clawed toes. He was tall, with anvil shoulders above a broad chest. His ankle-length coat was black, as was his cocked fedora. The brim sat low over beady eyes that were cauldron black and wet like fresh paint.
But his head! Good lord, his head.
His face was a mutation of humanoid and crow, a monstrous abomination of nature.
A large black beak—meat-hook sharp—protruded a good three feet from his face. His brow ridge was prehistoric. And his immense, concave cheekbones made his face a
horrific Neolithic mashup of caveman and carnivorous bird of prey.
Caitlin glanced at the sky. Churning storm clouds hinted at the terrible violence to come. Thunder crackled as the humidity-charged air filled her nostrils.
As her hunger rose again, she sensed waves of blue-violet light flowing out of her, ascending skyward. In her mind’s eye, she saw the shoreline of the Dipping Pools of Mount Velarium rising.
Her rational mind was crumbling like crisp autumn leaves under the feet of passersby. Her body began to shiver as it became drenched in icy sweat.
Then the unthinkable happened.
The last slivers of white in her eye washed over in red.
Her will was gone.
Her muscles hardened until they were as firm as dried cement. The blood in her veins surged with fresh adrenaline. She felt as if she could have lifted the whole mountain over her head.
She whirled toward Janus.
Ha!
The big crow was far less imposing than a mountain. He was a quick meal, fast food. She would have him now and be done with him.
But Janus moved first. He lunged through the air . . . seized Caitlin by the throat.
He was going for the quick kill.
His clawed hands choked the air out of her lungs. She laughed an airless laugh. Soundless. She stared hard into his icy black eyes. She was calm, serene, and as ravenous as a black hole!
Her violent hunger triggered tactics to help her end her impending strangulation.
She balled her fists.
Crossed her forearms in an X.
Then she exploded her two upper limbs outward, breaking his choke hold. Her right fist swung around with fierce velocity, landing a crushing blow to Janus’s rib cage.
Snap!
She wheeled right, firing a punishing elbow uppercut to the beak.
Crack!
His black-feathered head snapped back.
His wings sprang open like a parachute.
Whumppp!
They flapped like devil wings. The stench of urinary ammonia hit Caitlin like a punch.
Janus’s liquid black eyes began leaking giant tears—or was it black blood?
He’s injured!
Black droplets rolled down his cheeks like boiling tar. His demon breath blew hot and she could smell the bitter aroma of charred liver on it. He cawed like a hellhound, belting out a song of the underworld.
Their battle dance was underway.
They circled each other slowly, sizing up the competition. A roll of thunder shook the ground. Sullen clouds pressed down from the skies. The darkness engulfing the dancers made the black shade of night seem like an orange-pink sunrise by comparison.
The crowman planted a thought in Caitlin’s mind: “Thank you!”
It was said in all earnestness.
“The pain magnifies my power, deepens my quest to drain you of your last gram of blood!”
Janus struck his head forward with cobra speed.
Caitlin shifted left.
Not in time.
Janus impaled her on his scissor-sharp beak.
Her body dangled in the air, skewered like a piece of meat. Her legs pedaled, but she went nowhere.
Bright red blood pooled around the entrance wound on her belly and seeped out the exit wound on her back.
My blood is warm—I’m still human. But I’ll die on this stake! Unless . . .
Caitlin gripped both edges of the beak with her hands. She pushed. Her stomach wrenched. Her torso squirmed. Her whole body bled its way backward as she scooted it along the beak. Blood smeared it with dark-red varnish. She felt the sickening sensation of the spike sliding through her belly, bypassing her entrails.
She shrieked, crying out her determination as she steadily maneuvered herself off the murderous appendage. With a final shove, her body disengaged.
She fell to the ground, hard.
Janus whipped his head from side to side. Blood sprayed from his beak.
She rose back up, her left arm protecting her belly wound. Her blood was turning cold. She was losing her true self, her spirit, her soul.
Janus speared his serrated claw at her remaining eye, intending to blind her.
She danced right.
He swiped with his other claw.
She swerved left, dodging the second blow.
The crowman shot straight up, skyward. He disappeared into the grumbling storm clouds.
He’s fleeing?
Janus burst through the other end of the billowing gloom, and tore an arced path above a mountain peak.
He suddenly froze, midair. Upright. Standing motionless in the sky like some sort of demon god. He flung the fedora from his head, tightened his long black coat. His bat-black eyes began boiling red. And then Janus hurtled through the air like a bullet shot from hell.
Caitlin was dead set in his crosshairs.
Her telescopic eye calculated his speed, his time of arrival down to a nanosecond. She leaped.
Whooooooooooosh!
He just grazed her.
Then he hit the ground hard, tumbling in a flare-up of dust and debris. As he struggled to his feet, Caitlin leaped onto him.
This ends now.
She wrapped her legs around his neck.
A triangle choke hold.
She twisted her body, sending Janus into a crocodile death roll. Again, and again, and again . . . On the final roll, she slammed him to the rock-hard ground.
I have him now!
His neck was locked between her wringing thighs.
The blood in her eyes flashed like torch fire. Her craving for Janus’s blood was vampirelike: a primal and terrible yearning she had never before experienced. A yearning she loved. A yearning she despised and feared.
Two more crowmen dropped from the firmament. There was murder in their basement-black eyes.
“About bloody time,” Derek Blackshaw shouted as he hit the ground after them, swinging from a centurion tree. “Now get on with it, you ugly bastard fowl!”
The crowmen closed in on Caitlin like a pack of hyenas.
“Stand down, or I’ll snap his neck,” Caitlin warned as she tightened her squeeze.
The crowmen’s eyes darted about, flitting covetously. Their blood-hunting beaks poked at the air.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” Derek called out.
The crowmen inched closer, as if teasing their prey.
“I’ll do it!” Caitlin shouted. She bent Janus’s neck back, showing she was ready to bite his throat out.
Scarecrow swung down from another tree. He was stuffed with fresh straw and black crow feathers.
The woodman made of tin trailed behind them, emerging from another tree.
“Eat him and you’ll become him!” Scarecrow shouted as he hit the ground.
“The Enchanter wants you to win,” Tin Man warned. “Because he wins either way!”
There is but one victor in war: war itself!
Caitlin wrestled with her own primal instinct, her visceral reaction to her dire situation. Her instinct screamed, Kill him. Now! Her intellect understood that darkness has one goal: to breed. The Tin Woodman was right. She frantically searched her being for some lingering remnant of humanity. A spark. A glimmer.
There was none.
She had become powerless to resisting the red band of the spectrum.
Another voice spoke: The sun still shines when a curtain is drawn and the room goes black.
Was her humanity still shining somewhere inside?
Caitlin cried out: “Where?”
The curtains, Caitlin! Behind the curtains!
The curtains were the reactions generated by the red band. Pulling back a curtain took a strong measure of will, a glint of green.
She had none. Her self-control had been vanquished. The chance to choose lost, like a stone skipped into the sea.
An enchanting sound suddenly filled the distant skies: Birdsong, growing louder by the second.
The nightingales of Neverland!
Caitlin glanced overhead. The mass of songbirds eclipsed the sky; feathered troubadours arrived by the hundreds of thousands.
Another resounding chorus began to fill the firmament, but this time from a different direction. A hundred thousand more nightingales were arriving, probably from Treasure Island.
The skies teemed with a sea of brightly colored wings. It looked like a million gallons of freshly spilled paint splattered across heaven’s canvas in hues of orange, pink, purple, and blue. Their melody lit up emerald sparks inside Caitlin. She began to hope it would be enough to allow her to express choice again.
Defeating darkness with darkness yields greater darkness.
If I win, I lose.
Choose!
Caitlin had always drawn curtains as a response to crippling fears when they attacked—the excessive regard for her own life, her own discomfort. Nothing else mattered in a moment of panic.
She wanted to kill Janus to save herself.
That was the normal reaction.
Solutions were found in the violet.
Resist the red.
A sliver of light tinseled in her eye.
She summoned a wavelength of green kindled by the birdsong. Caitlin unlocked her legs, releasing Janus from the throes of death.
The crowman leaped to his feet.
Two more crowmen dropped from the sky and gathered next to their leader.
Gruncle Derek moved in a bit closer. He shrugged. “Took long enough. Now make your move, you blasted black-eyed birds!”
The six crowmen spread their wings. Whuuummmp!
“Perfect,” she heard Gruncle say as he swung the duffel bag off his back. It thumped on the ground.
There was a sudden commotion. Caitlin whipped her head around to look left.
Blackbeard had broken loose from Peter Pan. He was charging like a bull toward Natalie, who was still in the claws of the crowman. The galloping pirate had Peter’s dagger in his own hand. He raised it high as he zeroed in.
Natalie squirmed and twisted, struggling to escape.
Blackbeard leaped in the air, knife poised to strike.
Natalie closed her eyes and braced for impact.
The pirate came down hard, plunging the dagger and then twisting it as it punctured—
Natalie howled in horror.
Janus and his five winged henchmen moved in on Caitlin for the final kill.
Gruncle Derek upended his duffel bag and poured out its contents.
Ten million yellow, crazed ants scurried out in erratic, bustling zigzags!
The crazed ants incited a blood-curdling symphony of caws from the crowmen!
Caitlin shook her head stunned by a realization. It had become as clear as freshwater in her mind: the undead really have no choices. Vulturous cravings commanded their behavior.
She watched it happen before her very eye: Janus and his crowmen groaned with terrible anguish at feeling compelled to turn away from her, then moaned with ineffable rapture as they turned to the horde of ants and surrendered themselves to the insidious pleasures of anting!
“Bloody addicts is what they are!” Derek muttered.
The crowmen crushed the ant colonies and smeared their narcotic fluids over their wings—a vulgar display of unrestrained indulgence.
Derek Blackshaw waved his hand in contempt. “This piss-colored infestation should keep those junkies occupied for a while.”
Caitlin’s heart shattered as she looked over at Natalie. Back in the orphanage, she had given Girl Wonder her solemn promise to hug and hold her whenever she needed comforting. That brainiac twerp had come running to her, arms wide, but Caitlin had been forced to wave her off.
Now it was time to keep her promise.
CHAPTER Forty-Five
Caitlin and Gruncle Derek swiftly jogged over to Natalie and Blackbeard. The crowman who had just held her lay dead, black blood pooling around the dagger that Blackbeard had plunged into his chest.
Caitlin threw her arms around a visibly shaken Natalie. Her curly mane of hair was sprayed with the blood of the dead crowman. The girls wept in each other’s arms.<
br />
“Are you okay?” Caitlin whispered in Natalie’s ear.
“I am now.” She squeezed her big sister tighter. Then she whispered in Caitlin’s ear. “Your eye? Is it—?’
“Shh,” Caitlin interrupted. “It’s no big deal. I’m just glad to have you back.”
Gruncle Derek went straight to Blackbeard. Both men let out hearty laughs as they joined in a warm embrace, giddy like drunken men. They slapped each other on the back and danced about.
Caitlin and Natalie turned to look.
They know each other?
The nightingales still sang out, and Blackbeard’s red-chipped eyes had turned lagoon blue—without a trace of scarlet. Whatever spell Blackbeard had been under, the song of the nightingales had broken it.
“Can you believe it?” Natalie said to Caitlin.
“What?”
“I think that’s actually Bobby Gramps.” She was pointing to Blackbeard. “He killed the crowman. His eyes changed from bloodshot to sparkling blue. I watched it happen.”
Natalie ran into Blackbeard/Bobby Gramps’s arms to test her theory. He hoisted her up in his arms.
The wheels were turning in Caitlin’s mind. Her mom had been under a spell that deluded her into believing she was the Queen of Hearts.
Derek smiled at Caitlin as he gestured to Blackbeard/Bobby Gramps. “He’s me long-lost brother.”
Scarecrow next came trotting over and Caitlin was glad to see him.
The straw man laid an arm around her shoulders as he pointed to the base of Mount Velarium. Caitlin warmly patted his hand.
“You made it!” she said with a smile.
He gave a thumbs-up. “A bit of stuffed straw, some stuffed black feathers—works wonders. Now, please listen. We haven’t much time. Follow the trail of stairs—over there, at the bottom.”
Caitlin couldn’t concentrate on Scarecrow’s instructions. She had sensed something she couldn’t put her finger on during the entire journey. Suddenly, the thought crystalized in her mind. It concerned Gruncle Derek. And it strangled her heart. She turned to him.
“You’re dead. You died a long time ago. Like my mom.”
Derek seemed taken aback. “No, no,” he replied. His white aura turned red.
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