Wonderland (Deadly Lush Book 2) Page 14

“I'm not okay,” Shiloh retorted, and she could feel the trauma of the past few days rising to overwhelm her. Couldn't they see what a bloody mess she was? Couldn't they see a thousand things had all but picked her apart? Even now she put a steadying hand to the railing, barely able to cling to consciousness. Her breath started coming faster, her voice reducing to a raspy whisper. “I'm not... I'm not oka–” It caught in her throat completely, a wave of nausea coming over her.

  Where was this coming from? She hadn't been this pathetic on her trek back across the island. There was something about being at safety's gates again that doused her own resolve and turned her into a complete sop.

  “Alright,” Leia was granting over-submissively to placate Shiloh, simultaneously placing a tentative hand on her shoulder and edging between her and Alex.

  But Shiloh shrugged off her hand, pulling herself away down the rail to get some space. Her body was trembling, feverish.

  Others were milling up onto deck, drawn by the ruckus.

  Shiloh ignored them, staring down into the silver-blue water, the motion of the boat beneath her feet making her stomach churn. She was going to be sick.

  “...her back,” she heard someone murmur behind her. What must two gaping wing-holes look like? They were surely infected at this point, having gone untreated and been subjected to a thousand unsanitary adventures between her flight and her return to the eastern shore.

  But all she could think about was her seasick stomach, the fever suddenly making her sweat and shiver simultaneously. It was as if...the motion of the sea was stirring the toxin again through her veins, waking its dormant reprieve. She gritted her teeth against the persisting urge to tear Alex's head off for almost getting her killed. Why was she so angry?

  At first, she'd merely attributed it to being put through the wringer and needing someone to take it out on. The kind of stress she had been through would leave anyone irate. But there was a tinge of something else, making her feel positively murderous.

  She felt her gaze rising from the water to glare darkly at the horizon. If he knew how much I've suffered...

  His little oversight had put her through a living hell. She had been cast like offal into the wilderness – wounded, alone, afraid, at the mercy of the land and the beasts and the twisted terrors of this sick, dark trap, and who had come looking for her? They had just left her out there.

  All this pain, so much pain, searing through her body because 'oh, malfunctions happen'. He might not be so quick to dismiss it if he were feeling what she was feeling right now.

  Maybe he should know what he cost you, Shiloh mused. Maybe then he would be more careful next time. More thorough. And no one else would have to suffer the consequences of such a fateful oversight.

  She turned from the rail decisively, not even sure exactly what she planned to do – she wasn't thinking clearly – but Jayx, closer than she expected, caught her arm. Held her firmly in front of him with a calm, iron grip.

  “Your eyes,” he said, tone completely stoic. He looked down at her, searching her gaze.

  What about her eyes? She stared obstinately back at him, straining experimentally against his hold. He didn't budge.

  “My eyes are fine,” Shiloh grumbled through clenched teeth. Let me go.

  “They're bloodshot.”

  “If you knew what I've been through, that wouldn't surprise you.”

  “And what have you been through?” Jayx pressed. There was a slight bulge in his arm as his strength canceled her resistance. “What happened out there?”

  That flash of red hair shifted behind him, and Shiloh's gaze snapped condemningly to it.

  You’re not off the hook yet, Alex.

  A strange intensity focused him in her sights. Jayx was forgotten, except for a distant, parallel train of thought devising all the ways she might get away from him, get out of his vise-like grip.

  She was oblivious to the way Jayx studied her, narrowing his eyes at the behavior she was displaying. The way he tightened his grip at what he saw.

  “Shiloh,” his unheard voice murmured. “Shiloh, look at me.” He shifted to cover her visual of Alex, crowding her vision with his own muscular frame so she was forced to acknowledge him. “Look at me.”

  Nostrils flaring in agitation, she glared at him. “I want to talk to Alex,” she said.

  “A minute ago you made it clear you didn't want to see his face.”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “No, you don't.”

  “Yes I do. Don't tell me what I want to do, you big oaf–”

  “You're not yourself. I need you to tell me what happened out there.”

  “What happened?” The fire was burning full-throttle again, flaring like it had when Mother Eve had appeared in the woods and given it something to focus on. “What happened is I was thrown to the mercy of the savages, impaled, carried off, dropped from the sky, stung, poisoned, chased down by the Tribal, attacked, picked apart by blood-sucking creatures, herded off of a cliff... And he needs to understand what I went through so he doesn't make the same mistake again!” She was all but shouting by the end, securing the attention of the crowd.

  “He didn't make a mistake, Shiloh. It was a risk we took. It could have happened to anyone.”

  “Don't cover for him. This is on him. And he needs to know.” She jerked on his hold at that point, growing ferociously determined to break away. “Get off me!” If he thought he could hold her, he was wrong. She had battled the Queen of the Savages in this state.

  His hold faltered at the power of her outburst. Just slightly, and then he corrected his grip, but Shiloh was not to be contained.

  She struggled violently, and he wrestled for purchase on her arms as she pulled away across the deck.

  Only when he'd backed her into a corner and she shrieked again at him to let her go did he relent, allowing her a pace between them. Though seemingly unperturbed by her antics, there was a certain hint of wariness in his stance, in the way he kept himself purposefully between her and the others.

  Panting, Shiloh drilled him with her gaze. It seared out from under her lashes, hating the position he had assumed against her. Get out of my way, jungle boy, she thought. You're causing a scene.

  “He has to know,” she maintained through gritted teeth.

  “He knows,” Jayx assured her, trying to ease the tension.

  But he couldn't know, Shiloh thought. He couldn’t know until he was bleeding from a hundred different places.

  Unexpectedly, there came a small voice from the onlookers.

  “Shi?”

  Something in her shifted at the sound of that voice. A small trace of maternal instinct just strong enough to overpower this darker, sinister temper.

  She turned her bloodshot eyes on Zack, where he had separated himself from the others to peer quizzically at the state she had returned in. He looked so small, so alone, so uncertain about the wisdom of addressing her. And somewhere, not so deep down, her heart ruptured a little that he could possibly be afraid of her.

  She had threatened to feed him to the sharks, once, she reminded herself. Why should she care if she frightened him now?

  Her fury flickered as she stood there staring back at him, conflict stirring within her. She opened her mouth to say something – “it's okay, Zack”, maybe – but she never got the chance.

  A shadow passed over the rising sun, swooping up over the rail of the ship, and once again a burst of wind and a sharp stab of claws saw Shiloh airborne, taking flight with the rest of them as witnesses.

  20 – Needles

  A swift flurry of wingbeats made as if to carry her away over the water, but Jayx wasn't having it. He was in motion like a bullet from a gun barrel, leaping up onto the rail and diving to tackle Shiloh's kidnapped form mid-flight. His added weight downed the thief and its prize, plunging all three of them into the water.

  A rush of cold bubbles silenced the world, Shiloh's lungs clamping shut barely before she gulped down a mouthful of oce
an. Hair and murk swirled across her face. Her wings turned leaden, her limbs lethargic. The sinuous underworld churned around her, an abyss of confusion.

  But through the bubbles there were fins – slippery, serpentine fins, darting away as their lair was disturbed.

  The sirens.

  Shiloh felt a spark of alarm, but it was distant, glazed over by the otherworldly feeling of the elements around her.

  Then, in dreamlike slow-motion, came the other fins. As the sirens slithered away, a new horde of creatures swarmed in. Beautiful rich-colored fins that billowed like graceful, tattered silk in the water – violet, magenta, indigo, and aqua – attached to hulking silver bodies.

  Through a veil of bubbles Shiloh caught a glimpse of their faces. The pointed noses and battering-ram-like skulls, beady eyes, and wicked rows of teeth.

  Sharks. Unlike any sharks Shiloh had ever seen, but why wouldn't the sharks of Paradise flounce around with Betta-fish-like fins, pretty as underwater flowers?

  That was when the fear broke through the glaze, consuming her completely. She thrashed to get in control of her body in the water, but her wings were like two tar-soaked anchors and she was all tangled up in the comet-like mass that was Jayx, plunging in after her. She kicked desperately to free herself from underneath him, floundering like a fish caught in a net. Jayx was maneuvering to reverse their tangle just as quickly, but where he took to floating, Shiloh continued to struggle. While the sharks' fins worked in fluid tandem with their bodies, Shiloh's wings were like two fins fighting her.

  Aren't these confounded things hollow? she thought in the back of her mind, willing them to float. It was their thrashing that was hindering their buoyancy, though. Clearly the underwater terrain was not something they had bargained for, and in their half-intelligent attempt to compensate, they were doing more harm than good.

  If they were going to fuse themselves to her as a host, the least they could do was afford her some control...

  Then it occurred to her – what if she did have some manner of control? It was impossible to focus in the abyssal fray, and too outlandish a notion to master in an instant in any scenario, but thanks to the dandelion toxin that seemed to turn Shiloh into an animal version of herself, she was largely a creature of instinct in that moment.

  She sent a sharp wave of intent toward the point where her body connected to these new appendages, and to her surprise, they gave a corresponding jerk, propelling her up toward the surface of the water.

  It was all she managed to procure, but it was enough to point her in the right direction and eliminate the Seraphspan as a condemning anchor. She sailed up beside Jayx, bubbles rolling down off her body, and he seized her arm anew and hauled her toward the warped lens of sunlight that would deliver them to the air.

  They were so close, almost there, when a horrifying lurch jarred Shiloh to a stop. In slow motion she peered back through the dazzling murk and confirmed her fears: one feathered appendage, clamped in a shark's crushing jaws.

  Indirectly halted as well, Jayx took stock of the culprit and abandoned his quest for the surface, kicking back toward the danger.

  Finally backed by a moment of lucidity, Jayx was reaching for his belt knife, swiping it out in a flourish of bubbles and fighting the lethargic underworld to stab straight into the shark's thick skull. It took two tries – wrestling it loose and cleaving again, hard – but then it took. Ink-like blood billowed into the water.

  He didn't sport an authentic shark-tooth necklace for nothing.

  Jayx kicked hard toward the surface as soon as the deed was done, catching Shiloh up in his current. And it was a good thing, because the bloodbath he procured drew a feeding frenzy to the wounded shark.

  Shiloh's lungs screamed. The surface seemed a world away. A taunting dimension far above that she would never attain.

  Like the sky. Looming and there, destined to always hang over her head, yet always unattainable.

  But you have wings, now, whispered that vocal corner of her mind.

  The sky was hers for the taking.

  It was hard to say if she influenced the second spurt of her wings that helped propel them upward again, or if the Seraphspan had gained its own sense about the situation. Either way, the fin-like extensions no longer hindered her, and she and Jayx broke the surface with more gusto than if it had just been their own strength driving them.

  All too aware of the added source of muscle, Jayx was sure to sling an arm over Shiloh's shoulder, down across her chest from behind, and clamp her to him as they emerged. The Seraphspan was pinned between them, though none too happy about the arrangement. Shiloh felt it jostling between their bodies, pulling on the wounded sockets it had stabbed into her back with every jerk and twist.

  She gasped for air, lungs razed raw, but could feel her head lulling in a drug-like state the instant fighting for her life was no longer required of her.

  She couldn't take anymore. Was tired of fighting. If this fever wanted her, let it take her.

  Outside of the bubble she occupied, she could hear Jayx shouting – could feel the vibrations of his voice against her back – “Get me some rope!”

  She was vaguely aware of the rope, when it came. A lasso landing around her shoulders in the water. As if...as if they planned to hang her.

  Even a fate such as that could not faze her in her absent state.

  Let them hang her, then.

  But that wasn't to be her fate. Not this day. Instead, Jayx worked it down underneath her arms before pulling it tight. The struggling Seraphspan was cinched to her back to still its antics, but Jayx heaved on the tresses harder still, sparing Shiloh no gentleness as he ensured the severity of the binding. Next he was fashioning some foolproof knot to tie off his handiwork, his fingers weaving a deft pattern against her back.

  The sharks must not have been a major threat anymore, if he was paying so much attention to detail. Or it was simply a priority to ensure the Seraphspan was in check, lest they get free of the shark-infested waters only for Jayx to have to tackle her back into them again as her wings contrived a similar getaway to the first.

  Next thing she knew she was being hauled up the side of the ship, and – slop – let down onto the deck.

  The sky was so bright, glaring down at her. She clamped her eyes shut, turning her face into the boards.

  It was impossible to say if the others remarked about the phenomenon of the Seraphspan attached to her back; either she was too far out of it to decipher anything anyone uttered, or all of them were speechless.

  All she knew was nothing had ever felt as soft as the planks that bit into her side, and that nap on the beach had not been nearly enough.

  And then all she knew was nothing. Had she ever known anything?

  Had there ever been anything other than blackness? Than the all-consuming abyss darker than night?

  Than the creature at last hatching completely from its shell in the deepest, darkest recesses of her being, crawling free of its egg when it was too dark for anyone else to notice...?

  *

  “Bind her hands and put her below where there's no open sky,” Jayx commanded, “And under no circumstances are you to untie her.” Then he was striding off across the deck toward the dinghy.

  “Where are you going?” Ophelia called after him, kneeling at Shiloh's side.

  “She’s demonstrating toxin exposure. I need something to extract it from her veins.”

  Ophelia grimaced. “What kind of toxin?”

  Jayx stayed his departure just long enough to sear an ominous glance back over his shoulder, unable to hide the gravity of the situation. “The kind that creates Tribal.”

  And then he was gone, not waiting around for the cowl of foreboding that settled with his words. He was gone, and he didn't look back. Time was of the essence. He had to get the toxin out of her before it did irreparable damage, if it hadn't already.

  She had been out in the wilderness for a significant amount of time. Who was to say when she ha
d been infected. Yesterday? The day before?

  No one had seen what had happened to her during the raid of the Tribal's camp, and she had been gone long enough that the conclave of refugees had started to accept there was a possibility that she wasn't coming back.

  Jayx had been more relieved than he cared to admit when she showed up on that beach, proving their fears wrong. He was even less inclined to admit the other feeling that had dashed through him, when she touched his beard and smiled up at him. Something entirely too pleasant, and there was no room for that. No room, or time, or even the likelihood that she mirrored the silly notion. The touch itself hadn’t meant a thing - she was delirious.

  And extremely lucky the delirium hadn’t set in before she made it through the jungles of hell. Then again, if she’d been delirious when he found her at the gates, who was he to say she hadn’t survived a portion of the island on a compromised level of wits? The girl was made of fierce stuff.

  All the more so now that she had been infused with a strain of predatory poison.

  Not necessarily a bad thing where her own survival on the island was concerned, but it was an unpredictable substance, and all too quick to see her turn her aggression on her fellow comrades.

  If action was not taken, she would become just like the enemy they had declared war upon.

  Jayx plowed quickly through the shallows and leaped out of the dinghy onto the beach. On his way into the jungle he swept a peculiar-shaped conch shell off the beach, and ran with it through the trees until he was thoroughly immersed. Then he trailed to a stop, catching his breath before lifting the shell to his lips.

  He blew into the twisting, hollow chamber, and a horn-like sound issued out into the woods.

  Come to me, he bade, revolving to watch the shadows for the creature he had called. At the silence that met his summons, he tried again, sending another deep tone into the trees.

  A minute later he heard the crack of brush under hooves, and then, from the feathery vegetation emerged a gloriously-crowned stag. Jayx folded his fingers around the shell, holding out his other hand to coax the creature closer.