“I did!” he shouts as he dives out of the way. “This is an old fear!”
More phantoms slam through the camp, taking the faces of everyone’s worst fears, sending it into chaos. We’d been preparing to leave at first light, but it suddenly feels too far away. When a large Crocodile comes lumbering through the camp, Tiger panics and sprints away with Aniya. There’s recognition in her eyes, and when the Crocodile grins at her and gives chase, I react before I know what I’m doing. I can see the fear in Tiger’s eyes, know this must be the phantom who nearly killed her, and I refuse to allow any harm to come to Aniya or the woman who finally made March smile.
I move on instinct, dragging the large battle axe from the holster at my back and running after the monster. With a battle cry, I raise the axe over my head, leaping into the air so I have as much power behind the blow as possible. The crocodile turns with savage teeth and opens his jaws, expecting my axe to do no damage just as other weapons haven’t, except, the moment my axe touches down, there’s slight resistance, as if it’s meeting thick skin. The beast’s eyes widen in shock for a split second before it bursts into dust. I’m so startled, I nearly drop my axe.
“The Berserker,” Aniya whispers in awe. She stares up at me with eyes as wide as Tiger does. “Attie, go get the big one.”
I don’t’ need Aniya to command me, not really. I’m already turning towards the large phantom Jabberwocky with Alice on it’s back. Though everyone attempts to slash at it, their weapons are harmless, even Cal’s sword. I can’t help but think how things come full circle. So many years ago, I didn’t get the chance to join in the real battle, didn’t ever face off with the Jabberwocky, and yet, here I am now, preparing to do just that, the only one able to fight it.
I get a running start as the phantom comes back around, its claws dragging down the center of the Coven. I cringe when it catches on some of the people, people we won’t have time to bury after this. I don’t know if it’s something I know or just a feeling, but we won’t be able to stay here after this. The phantoms of Skull Rock will be the last line, the final sign we need to move.
The Jabberwocky is too high to reach, and for a moment, I stumble, unsure what to use to leap, but March comes from nowhere, and White with him, and they both take a knee and lace their fingers. There are no words exchanged—there doesn’t need to be. I push harder into a sprint, fisting my axe tightly in my hand. The Jabberwocky is almost to us. I brace a foot on March’s hands, the other on White’s, and with the strength of Wonderland between them, they both throw me into the air just as the head of the Jabberwocky goes past. I don’t shout, don’t alert the beast to what I’m doing. If it knows and hits me away before I make contact, I’ll have failed. Instead, I’m as silent as I can be when I raise the axe high. I don’t even grunt when the axe slices through thick skin.
I slam back into the ground with an oof just as dust explodes above us and starts to rain down on the Coven. There should be cries of victory, but there’s too many phantoms to celebrate, too many things wearing faces of everyone’s worst fears. Cheshire faces off against a woman with cat ears like his, her stripes green when his are blue. Cal runs from the White Queen as she skitters through the Coven. Jupiter stares at a very human looking man with a sneer on his face but she doesn’t back down. She raises her sword high, her face twisted into something far more vicious than I’ve ever seen on her.
And when I turn, I come face to face with my mother.
I stumble, nearly dropping my axe. I only keep it between my fingers by sheer force of will. I know this isn’t my mom, know she died long ago, before we ever battled the Red Queen, but it’s her face, her clothes, everything that was my mother.
“Attie,” she growls. The voice is off, somewhat breaking me from my shock. My mother never sounded so angry in her life, not once. She was the calm one. “You were the death of me. I should have never had children. You’re both as useless as your father was.”
Her words break me completely free of the hesitation. It’s so far outside who my mother was, there’s no way I can confuse the two. “You may wear her face, but you forgot to do your research when you were digging through my mind,” I growl, raising the axe.
The form shifts and takes the shape of a certain pixie, and though I know it’s not Tink, it reminds me that Tink is still in her home, alone and at the mercy of phantoms.
“Is this face better?” the phantom asks, tilting her head sideways. The colors are wrong. This Tink lacks the black lines on her skin, the color to her wings. Apparently, it’s hard to mimic such a prism of color.
“No,” I grunt, and swing my axe without hesitation. The phantom turns to dust seconds later.
“What the actual fuck is happening?” White snarls from beside me suddenly.
“Wendy said the enchantments of Skull Rock are broken. So—”
“So then all the demons are here,” he finishes. His eyes meet mine. “We need to move. We need that door now.”
I nod, turning in a circle. The phantoms are recking havoc on the Coven, not physical enough to be killed by anything other than my axe but physical enough to cause pain and draw blood. “Get everyone together. We move into the trees right away. Hook’s plan. We’re at the end and if we don’t move, we’ll all die.”
I turn to sprint down the road.
“Wait!” White calls. “Where are you going?”
I slice across another phantom as I pass, and the dust coats my body, but I don’t even care. There can only be one reason Tink isn’t out here fighting. Even weakened, she would have come out with claws peeled and teeth sharp. She has to be facing her own demons, alone, and I won’t allow that to happen. “To get my Pixie!” I shout. “Get everyone together! I’ll be right back!”
“Attie!” I hear Cal’s voice cut through the others, but I don’t stop. I can’t, not when Tink is in trouble. “Attie!”
I run harder, something in my chest telling me to go, go, go!
I barrel through the door of the large home, the door nearly ripping from its hinges, but I don’t stop. I burst through the door of the green room just in time to see a phantom wearing my face look up at me, my pixie bleeding at his feet.
A snarl curls my lip as I raise my axe. “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that,” I chide.
I leap forward with a battle cry.
Chapter Twenty-One
Even though the earth shakes violently while I kneel in the green room, I pay it no mind until the big boom shakes my house as if some sort of explosion went off. My eyes pop open and I turn towards the door. I’m not fully recovered yet, still need another few minutes to feel rejuvenated, but that sound means something bad is coming. Even with my fingers and knees buried in the soil beneath me, I watch the door, just in case danger comes in.
And then the screaming starts.
Forgetting my task, I stand and take a step towards the door, my eyes wide. What’s happening outside? Are the Lost attacking?
“I wouldn’t go out there if I were you.”
I whip my head towards the new voice inside my room, wrinkling my brow when I find Atlas. How did he get in the room without me seeing?
“Why should I not go out there?”
Atlas grins. “The enchantments of Skull Rock have broken, Queen. And all the phantoms are here.”
Realization slams into me when Atlas calls me ‘Queen’, when he tilts his head in a way Atlas has never done. My Berserker would never be in here while the others scream outside. My Berserker would never tell me not to go help them.
“You’ve pieced it together,” the phantom says, grinning. It unnerves me that he wears Atlas’ face, but his mannerisms and expressions don’t belong to my Berserker.
The phantoms take the form of your biggest fears, your biggest regrets, and warps them.
Wendy’s words after she came back from Skull Rock echo in my head and it nearly cripples me that Atlas is my biggest fear, that I care enough for him for the phantom to choose his face.
> “Is this where you start drawing blood?” I ask, raising my brow and lifting a hand tipped with claws. “You’ll find I’m no easy target, spirit.”
He laughs and the sound is like evil filtered through the least evil person’s mouth. I shift, because for all my words, I’m worried I won’t be able to raise a hand to the phantom when he attacks. I can feel his power, the strength in his stolen body, and wearing Atlas’ face ensures it’ll pain me to fight back. I know it isn’t Atlas. I know that, but actually raising my claws to him? I’m not sure where my strength truly lies anymore. The old Tink wouldn’t have hesitated. But the new Tink. . .
“I expected more from a Queen and a Daughter,” he says, taking a step forward. “But if you’re eager to get into it, I can do that.” His face twists cruelly, looking less like Atlas with the pure anger there. “Pity no one could ever love such a cruel, wicked thing as you. The Daughter protecting a heart even though she doesn’t have one. Isn’t that what they say about you?” He grins. “Just as Peter never loved you in the beginning, no one else ever can. I’ll never love you either, Tink. How could I love someone like you?”
I don’t answer but then again, I don’t think the phantom expects me to. His words pierce my heart rapidly, but I try not to let it show. The screams outside get louder and a battle cry echoes that I’d recognize anywhere. The corner of my lips curls up and the phantom narrows his eyes.
“Perhaps, you should stop talking and attack, spirit, because, if this is the best you’ve got, well, I overestimated you.”
It probably isn’t a good idea to provoke the powerful phantom but something about hearing that battle cry gives me strength as much as the soil at my feet does.
“As you wish.”
There’s no true warning, no moment where I can sense he’s about to spring. The phantom launches himself at me before I can follow the movement and barrels into me with more force than I expect. We slam into the wall in a ball of claws and snarls, my wings just barely avoiding being broken with the force. I wrap my claws around his neck but those eyes looking at me so much like Atlas’ make me hesitate, my body naturally revolting against it no matter how much I know this isn’t Atlas.
He laughs even as he buries his other hand in my gut, drawing blood, drawing a scream from my lips. “So, the wicked Queen has a heart after all,” he goads. “This should be fun.”
He twists his hand and I grit my teeth against the severe pain. It’ll heal fast but, in the moment, the pain is all-consuming. The moment he rips his hand free, I begin to heal, the plants around me helping me. Out of the corner of my eye, one of my favorite plants dies from the energy needed to heal me and I mourn its loss. The fern has been with me since I built the room.
I kick the phantom away, just enough to send him rolling, and flare my wings wide, drawing the small knife at my hip. I’m not sure what good it’ll do, but I have to try. I can’t run or else he’ll have full access to my wings. It’s either defeat him or die. But my blade isn’t for phantoms. I’m not sure if any are.
“You think that little thing can harm me?” He grins. “You think you can plunge it deep in your lover’s heart?” He taps his chest. “Here, I’ll even give you a free shot.”
I know he would never have offered it if it would work, but still I try. I spring forward and plunge the knife deep, my hand spasming as I let go at the sight of Atlas with a knife protruding from his heart. I’m away from the phantom quickly, watching carefully as he reaches up and pulls the blade out. There isn’t even any blood, not even a wound where the knife went in. How do I fight something that can’t be harmed?
“That was a good try, Your Majesty. I didn’t think you had it in you.” His face morphs, still Atlas but changed. “Now, it’s my turn.”
When his claws rip into my sternum, I scream, more of my plants dying as they try to give me the energy to heal fast enough. The phantom misses my heart only because I jerk away. Gasping for breath, he drops me in the soil at his feet, a mistake. I bury my finger in the soil, drawing strength as he prepares his next attack. When his claws wrap around my throat and lifts me, partially healed, I claw at his wrist, my wings fluttering at my back. My fingers do no damage to him but he certainly does to me as I fight to get away.
The sound of the front door to my home slamming open surprises the phantom into dropping me and I fall in a boneless mass at his feet. I’m bleeding from the wound in my chest, trying my hardest to heal it with the soil. More and more of my green room dies, and it pains me as much as it heals me.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out as I draw more, as the green withers to black. I’d nurtured this room, considered it part of my Coven, and here I was killing it in order to live.
Atlas, my real Atlas, steps through the green room door a second later with his axe held over his shoulder. His eyes take in my form desperately drawing strength from the soil, the new blood staining my dress, and then he focuses on the phantom wearing his face.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that,” he growls. He’s running forward with a battle cry before I can blink.
Obviously, the phantom doesn’t expect anything to happen. He grins at the new victim walking before him, and thinking that the axe will be just like my knife, he opens his arms wide, welcoming it. I’m just as surprised as him when the axe cleaves him in two, when he explodes in a rain of dust in my room. I stare at the place where he stood, watch the dust fall just to convince myself he was real.
My eyes trail over to the Berserker where he stands panting, his hair wild and slick with sweat, brutal with power in all his glory. His hard eyes move to me, taking stock of my body, of the wound healed on my chest but still pink with new tissue. Atlas fastens his axe to his back quickly and lifts me from the soil, mindful of my wings, as he cradles me against him.
“I can walk now,” I murmur, but I press closer, curling my hand around his neck, glad to have him so close.
“I’ll set you down once we’re outside,” he rasps, looking around at the mostly dead greenroom. “Your plants. . .”
“They healed me.” I swallowed thickly and met the Berserker’s eyes. “But they died doing so.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and though it’s my Atlas, his voice is thick with battle. “When we escape this place, I’ll build you the biggest greenhouse. I’ll YouTube building videos if I have to.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about for videos but hearing him say he’ll build me a greenhouse makes my heart throb painfully in my chest. “Is everyone else okay?”
“We lost people. The phantoms hit suddenly, and it took me longer to realize my axe did damage to them.” We step outside just in time to see the chaos of our people running around, preparing. In the distance, far closer than it should be, the shoreline is at the edge of the Coven, waves crashing against trees it shouldn’t be able to.
Setting me on my feet, Atlas calls out to everyone, his voice echoing in the empty space. They pause in their haste, turning eyes to him as he stands tall. “It’s time to move,” he booms. “We either leave Neverland now, or we sink with her.”
Wendy, Tiger, Hook, and the others all stand to the side, checking the bags they carry on their backs. We’ll have only one chance, and we’re relying on a plan that could backfire drastically. We’ll be relying on Wolfbane’s obsession with Wendy, and Wendy’s strength to find the door, get it open, and hold off the Croc long enough for us all to get through. We’ll be relying on a clock none of us have. The end could come before we ever make it to the Dark Side.
But though the people all step towards Wendy and Tiger’s side, there’s a group who separates away from the others, who have no bags, who stand watching us with sad eyes. Because they haven’t chosen to live. They’ve chosen to perish with Neverland.
Wendy chokes on a sob, and I know it’s for Swift as he stands like some sort of fallen God. His hair swirls around him, everything about him so pure it hurts. Even his wings glow with some divine light, and though there’s no pixie dust
for the fae, he still sparkles. Chips stands by his side even though I expected him not to, their fingers laced tightly. But it’s Smee and Pete that we all focus on.
The two pirates stand in the middle of the clearing, choosing neither side yet, but I can see the indecision on Smee’s face. He wants to go to Wendy, to stay with her, but he’s lived for far too long.
“Smee?” Wendy rasps. She won’t ask him to come. I know she won’t use sentiment to change his mind no matter how selfish she wants to be.
For three long seconds, they hover in the middle, until Pete grabs Smee’s face and smiles. “I haven’t had enough time to love you yet,” he says, pressing a quick kiss to his lips.
Wendy visibly relaxes when Pete and Smee join the side fighting to live, but her eyes well when Swift smiles gently at her. She steps forward, as does Tiger, and when I pat Atlas on the shoulder and step down, too, he doesn’t stop me. This is a duty for the Daughters.
I swallow the emotions in my throat, desperately trying not to let tears fall when I move towards my people. There’s far more fae and pixies in the group than the others, and I can understand why. We’ve lived the longest, most of us coming into existence with Neverland. Eventually, it becomes mundane, dreadful, to live and live and live without an end in sight.
Clasping wrists with every Coven member, and then moving on to do the same with every Tribe member and pirate, I manage to hold back my tears, remaining strong for them. They’ve made their decision. It’s my turn to honor them.
Wendy doesn’t even try to stop her tears, leaving little crystals of pain on the ground behind her.
It’s like holding a funeral for the living. I can see them, I can touch them, but I know they will die. It’s a sobering thought, one that has me stepping backwards when Wendy finally gets to Swift and Chips. She doesn’t beg them, doesn’t ask them why. The most human of us bows her head and wraps her arms around my general, a man who could easily kill but chooses not to.
Wicked as a Pixie (Daughters of Neverland Book 3) Page 15