Wonderland (Deadly Lush Book 2) Page 4

  Jayx continued the train of thought. “We train to master a gray area. To compare to a threat that we deem too horrible to walk to face of this earth. We walk the railroad tracks, aiming to master a position that both qualifies us as barbaric competitors and redeems us as the last champions of humanity. We train to master a position that I do not even know is possible, and you stand there and tell me you’re ready.”

  Duly humbled, Shiloh averted her gaze. She tasted blood in her mouth. Copper mixed with maple. She’d cut her tongue with the silly blade-licking stunt. Maybe she was being naïve. Ridiculous and foolish. And Jayx made a frighteningly good point about their contradictory objective. Could they accomplish the necessary evil without compromising the heart of their mission?

  She was not going to be dissuaded completely, though. Based on the conundrum Jayx posed, he could still be planning to coop them up forever without any victories to show for all their blood, sweat, and tears, and that wasn’t going to rest well with her.

  “I can’t just sit idly by.”

  “So you thought you'd stage your own rebellion and sneak off by yourself, and take on the Tribal singlehandedly, slaying them all with sheer defiance.”

  She shrugged. “I became a survivor back home by the sink or swim method. It stands to reason it will work here, too. And it did.”

  “It was reckless.”

  “Yes.” Shiloh didn’t bother denying that. It had been. The crazed thrill of it, the near-delirium, still resonated in her blood. But the fact remained. It had worked.

  A breath swelled in Jayx’s chest, pressing against the shark tooth he wore on a cord around his neck. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  Shiloh licked her lips, trying to hold her ground under the pressure of his disapproval. She knew how angry he must be – or perhaps how helpless he must feel – at her endangering herself after he’d worked so hard to ensure a fragile pretense of safety. “I came here to live. Not to hole myself up and cower offshore of the brighter future we have at our fingertips.”

  She had his attention, at least, her impassioned outburst granted an audience, so she blazed onward. “If you want me back under your watchful eye where you can have a hand in my chances of survival, then get on with it. But if you’re going to remain focused on babying the others along, I don’t want to take your attention away from them. At least maybe I can divert the Tribal’s attention while you bring your army up to speed.”

  Weighing her bold words, Jayx ran his gaze over her body, as if reassessing what she was made of. Or trying to decide what to do with the fresh little upstart in his midst. Then he pushed himself away from the tree, padding purposefully through the ferns until he was directly in front of her, forcing her to tilt her head back to hold his eyes. This close, she could see the blonde stubble starting to peek through his tan cheeks.

  Her breath caught in her throat at his nearness, but she refused to flinch. After all, how was she to maintain her stance as a worthy opponent of the Tribal if Jayx intimidated her?

  The Tribal, however, were not nearly so good looking.

  “If you go out into the jungle again without an escort, let it be stated it will be against my recommendation.”

  Shiloh swallowed. He was so aggravatingly good at casting a sense of foreboding. But…fair enough.

  “But you are right,” he added, surprising her. “If we have any hope of gaining the upper hand, it will be by making the first move.”

  Pride swelled in her chest at him seeing her side of things. A grin quirked her lips.

  “And you are right” – again he surprised her – “that I have become…resistant…to losing anyone else.”

  Compassion spilled through the pride, perhaps overly generous as his compliance subjected her to more favorable feelings.

  “You can’t save everyone,” she reminded him. “But we will not let them have all of us.”

  His somber, serious expression told her he was not convinced. As if you can make such a promise, it said.

  But her determination would count for something.

  Whatever lurked in the dark cloud of Jayx’s thoughts, it tucked itself away somewhere on the other side of the private world that Jayx orbited. “Very well, Shiloh Blade-Licker, Slayer Whom the Island Fears.” He reached for the blade he had only just returned to Shiloh. Perplexed, she surrendered it to him. “I’m with you,” he vowed, and licked the smear of sweet maple keenly off of the other side.

  *

  When Jayx rallied the refugees on board the Dauntless that evening, he sent away two of them.

  Zack and Starliss. The children.

  That was when Shiloh knew it was coming; he was about to refocus the operation in a more aggressive direction.

  Starliss had arrived with her father a few weeks prior. It was the first time Shiloh had seen someone blatantly defy the rules laid out in an invitation to Paradise: tell no one, and bring only yourself. When she had found Zack stowing away during her initial voyage, she had been afraid he would void her welcome for breaking the rules.

  It turned out the rules didn’t much matter anymore, of course, and were likely still outlined only to reinforce the illusion that Paradise was so special, but still – it had been reckless of Devon to take that chance. What would he have done if he’d arrived and things were as they were supposed to be, his admittance disqualified because he was a rule-breaker?

  Not that Shiloh could blame him. What would anyone do, if they received an invitation to utopia and had a child? Take advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and ask for forgiveness instead of permission, no doubt. Or set out from the beginning with the intention of delivering the child to Paradise’s gates and willingly forfeiting your own inclusion.

  Shiloh would not necessarily say the father-daughter duo was lucky for the circumstances that saw both of them welcomed, but at least they were together.

  The handsome, peppery-haired man looked somber for the evening’s meeting, clearly aware that any subject that required the children be sent away had to be a harsh one, when for their own good they were always included in even the gnarliest lessons that would aid their survival. Shiloh considered the tension in his bearded cheeks, wondering if he shouldn’t be excluded from the more dangerous proceedings due to his position as a parent. It was all too rare for children to have their parents, these days.

  With everyone present, Jayx hopped up onto the ship’s equine figurehead to address them. The cold sea breeze pulled at the cluster of dreadlocks gathered in a loose, partial braid at the back of his skull, and they fluttered out behind him like ratty streamers.

  I’m with you, he’d told Shiloh earlier in the jungle. Anticipation sparkled through her, wondering how that would manifest in the impending dialogue.

  “You are all survivors,” Jayx began. It was strange to hear his voice, usually so reserved, projected to reach them all. “You came to Paradise that way, thanks to the conditioning of the world you thought you escaped. You survived there long enough to escape. So you all have the groundwork laid for what you must become, in order to survive here.”

  The hair on Shiloh’s neck prickled, stirred by the conviction in Jayx’s opening. For all his aloof reputation, he was an engaging speaker.

  He went on: “As you know, Paradise is infested with a bloodthirsty tyrant. The spawn of brilliant minds, but subject to an invasion of animal instinct, the Tribal live for the cat-and-mouse thrill of hunting you down, and the essential supply of meat you provide for their carnivorous appetites. You are prey; they don't see you as human. Part of them can’t help it – the other part chooses not to. When they are driven to hunt, they will see you as a wolf sees a doe.

  “In order to combat this threat, in order to even hope to become your own force to be reckoned with, you must get in touch with an animal side of yourselves. You have to become more than strong. You must become brutal. Not just quick, but unflinching. People don't survive here – we want your story to be different. In order for it to be different
, you have to have something different than the others. Something more.

  “You came to Paradise hoping for deliverance. Hoping for Utopia. And it's here, all around – a lush, flourishing landscape that we should be able to thrive in. And it can be your home – but only if you want it badly enough to take it. You can have the peace and prosperity you came for, but only if you fight for it, more fiercely than any have before you. There will be no peace without a war. You will taste blood as surely as you will taste the fruit of this land. And you will learn to love it, to drink it as surely as wine, or this place will devour you. Or it will be your blood that Paradise drinks.”

  His gaze shifted seriously from one refugee, to the next, to the next, gauging their attention to what he was drilling into them. His face was even as stone; this was paramount. This was life or death. This was the only way any of them were getting out of this alive. Likely the only way any of them would live to see another day, or at least a single day as soon as any of them set foot on the soil they'd come to attain.

  Jayx's words stirred a breath of feral wind inside Shiloh. At the mention of becoming strong, brutal, unflinching, a keen feeling flared in her chest, surprising her. There it was – a hint of the animal she already had lurking inside her. It was stirring; hopefully that meant it wouldn't take too much more to get it to rear its ugly head outright.

  “So,” Jayx said with a sense of finality. “Whatever harmony you expected to find here, whatever ease you expected to integrate yourselves into as your new way of life – get rid of that notion. Strike it through the heart. Prepare yourselves for tooth and nail. Get used to the idea that, if you are not worse than the savages that would devour you, you will not survive here.”

  It was utterly sobering; Shiloh felt the grim cowl that settled over the gathering. Like a shadow over their brief impression of the sun, it gripped them, and Shiloh thought they all huddled the slightest bit closer together, in spite of no one moving a muscle. Goosebumps crawled over her own skin, and she wrapped her arms about herself. Probably the last trace of comfort she’d be afforded for some time.

  But was the gesture really to stave off the chill that Jayx had unleashed on his pupils, or was it to keep in the animal he sought to lure from its cage, already shifting too eagerly inside her?

  Stirring, shifting, unfolding...

  That's it, Beastie, the darker half of her coaxed. Come out to play.

  We have savages to hunt.

  6 – Fetch

  The water was a pearly aqua-gray in the twilight, its milky pane calm but choppy beneath the small boat. The barnacle-encrusted hull glided through the dappled wavelets, pulling out from the small hill-sheltered cove and cutting out into the open sea.

  Tight, roping muscles bunched in Mother Eve’s arms as she heaved on the oars, the strength of a hundred harsh years coursing through her ancient body. The frayed ends of peppery braids and long dreadlocks fanned out behind her in the boat, like a tangle of serpents twisting over one another. Twisting – and crawling, the locks abuzz with live, pinned beetles.

  A dozen glass bottles clinked together on the bottom of the boat as she rowed. Like wind-chimes, she thought.

  Like chains, others might say. But it was music to her ears.

  She saw the shadows in the water before the first protrusions of rock themselves, and changed course to maneuver the boat through the rock labyrinth as one who knew the pattern by heart. The rugged maze had guarded the island for decades against those who might otherwise stumble upon, or even come to overrun, the shore. Long had it kept the mystery of this place intact, and the integrity of the place preserved.

  But there were ways through the labyrinth. Ways the sea-serpents came and went, ways the 'honorary' guests of Paradise trickled through, ways those who had lived here for generations could learn to navigate to escape the island's snare.

  Barrier, snare... One might wonder how it could be both, but truly it was.

  Oh, was it ever.

  After the rocks, Mother Eve navigated the subtle currents until she felt the one she was looking for beneath the boat. She could sense it the same way an animal could sense a live vein pulsing in the throat of its prey. And there, she settled herself. Selected a lovely specimen of red glass from the bottom of the boat and cast it over the side into the water.

  Red was followed by purple, then green.

  Breakfast.

  Lunch.

  Dinner.

  Each splash elicited a pang of hunger in her gut.

  Alright, my pretties, she thought as the bottles drifted away, casting her eyes to the far distant horizon and imagining those that would receive the invitations to Paradise. Those that would soon make the crossing to the shore that summoned them, thinking they had turned over a fresh new leaf. My pretty little dreamers, so sweet and naïve.

  Fetch.

  7 – War Paint

  Lysander stood with his hands on the rail, staring down at the roiling cauldron of sirens that loitered about the ship. When he had first charmed them with his music, it had been to harness their services for one task – one task which had turned into two, admittedly, but he had never accounted for establishing this...prolonged loyalty. If loyalty was even the right word.

  'Obsession' might be more fitting. He did not suppose they would continue to worship at his feet if he fell into their midst, so much as latch onto him like leeches.

  Leeches intent on sucking every song from his soul.

  He was beginning to brood over just what type of pet he was keeping at his doorstep when a quick slither tickled the back of his neck. It was light, soft – spider-like. He turned, half-flinching, to find Farah as the culprit.

  Farah and her accursed butterfly tongue.

  Really, he should have been used to the nature of her antics by now. She was always sneaking up on him, steps as quiet as a butterfly's wings, and surprising him with a quick snake of that tendril-esque tongue of hers. Every morning, a tongue in the ear – startling him awake. Every time his back was turned, a tongue to the nape of his neck, drawing him around. Every time he zoned out when she was speaking to him, a tongue in the face – making sure he was listening.

  Sometimes, he liked it. When they stole kisses in the shadows, and she tickled the side of his face with it. The hollow of his throat. His ears the same as she liked to awaken him. (He had to admit it wasn't always unpleasant to be awakened thus. Sometimes it was a soft tickle. A gentle nuzzle, rather than an intruding flick.)

  And yet, it wasn't something you got used to. At least, he didn't suppose he would, for a long time.

  But the girl that would sneak up on him, trick him into turning... The girl that would tantalize him with a brush to the hollow of his throat or awaken him with a soft nuzzle to the ear... That was the same girl he had loved across the ocean, the same girl he had lost when she fled Vespice, the same girl he had struck off to find, endangered in the throes of Paradise.

  He had sworn he would find her, and find her he had. Changed, but the same. And he wasn't about to let the parts that were her go again, which meant he was committed to embracing the whole package. If that meant learning to deal with some exotic new oddities, he was game for the challenge.

  And sometimes, those exotic oddities were ridiculously attractive.

  A half-irritated, half-enamored feeling flashed through him. Ultimately, a smile pricked at his lips.

  “Farah.”

  “You looked as if you were thinking too hard.”

  “As usual.”

  “What do the sirens have to say today?”

  “Oh, you know. A lot of irresistible flattery that sounds a lot like gargling plankton.”

  “I am glad to learn what you find irresistible. Perhaps I should try it sometime.”

  Lysander's grin spread. He was really so fond of her. And so happy to see that the terrible cowl of grief that had nearly destroyed her had lifted. How much did she think of her family, of their blood dripping from snow-white petals, now that this was
her home, and rugged survival her everyday life? What had it been like recovering from that grief in the midst of tooth-and-nail stakes, the fantasy she had sought as a means of escape rupturing into a storm of violent, cruel shards? Perhaps it had been a distraction, the high-stakes terror overriding the grief.

  Perhaps Paradise, even in the midst of its savage deceit, had healed her after all.

  “I came to see,” Farah said, “if you want to climb the mast with me.”

  “A race?”

  “Naturally.”

  “You're bored again. Aren't you?”

  “An animal spirit gets restless. I am doing what I can to appease it.”

  “Restless…or does a certain altitude call to you, now that you resemble something that flies?”

  She peered conspiratorially at him from under her lavender lashes. “Could be that,” she admitted mysteriously.

  “Last one to the top is a sluggish caterpillar?” Lysander suggested.

  A sly gleam spread like spilled ink through Farah's eyes, and all at once that accursed, maddening tongue of hers snicked out to flick him in the throat. “You're it,” she taunted, and bolted for the mast.

  Lysander stripped shirtless and took off after her, tearing off his boots as he went, the swarm of irresistible creatures in the water forgotten behind him.

  *

  Shiloh found Zack tucked behind a cluster of crates on deck, weaving strands of dried seaweed into a braided loop. A glum shadow clouded his face, his motions methodical and absent.

  He may not have been included in the meeting, but he and Starliss had been filled in on enough of it afterward, just so the children would be prepared for the changes that would soon be taking place. There was no point trying to keep the escalation of things from them, because once the fighting began there would be obvious signs of it. And, likely, significant consequences.

  Since being burdened with the anticipation of war, there had been a clear shift in Zack’s mood.

  “Hey, kid,” Shiloh greeted, slopping down the bucket of indigo dye she had concocted.