March grins. “I can see better actually.”
My hand pauses in the middle of fixing it. “What?”
“I don’t need them to see. I just like the way they change my perceptions.” He shrugs and takes them off, tucking them away in his pocket. “Perhaps, it’s best to save them for another time, yes?”
I sigh, hiding my smile as I take his hand. I allow him to lead me over the large fallen tree trunk and towards the Hollow, still musing over the fact the March Hare wears glasses he doesn’t need. But that’s my mistake.
I should know better than to let my guard down. I should know better than to walk through Neverland without being on guard. The moment we step forward, our feet pressing into the dried leaves, I hear the click.
I try to shove March out of the way, not knowing what it is we trigger, but instead of spikes thrusting out—it wouldn’t have killed me but it would have hurt—the ground shifts, and the net we suddenly find ourselves in drags us into the sky. I snarl even as March grabs me to protect me, worried for my safety the same as I worried for him. Pressed close as we are in the net, it’s almost hard to breathe, but I have just enough time to drag out my knife and start sawing at the thick vines before the Lost swarm from nowhere.
“Fuck,” March snarls, his claws making an appearance again, but they don’t cut through the vines. My knife doesn’t either. I knew it wouldn’t, not once I see the shimmering yellow along the vines. They’re coaxed into this form, not weaved. They’re protected.
I close my eyes and focus but these vines don’t listen to me. They follow another master, one who shouldn’t be able to speak to them at all, even if they’re Dark Side vines.
“Don’t flinch,” I tell March when the Lost begin to lower us. “Don’t let them see.”
March’s face twists into the monster he assured me was under his skin, a low growl coming from his throat. “I’ll rip them all to shreds.”
I stare at him in surprise, but even then, I don’t flinch.
I’m not scared of the March Hare. I’m not scared of anything, not even the Lost as they lower the net, keeping it tight, and head towards the Dark Side of the island. The net never gives, never relaxes, and I know we’re in trouble.
Somewhere in the distance, something howls in victory.
Chapter Twelve
THE MAD HATTER
“What is it?” Clara whispers, leaning closer to me to ask where no one can overhear.
Both of us stare at the creature that walks in and takes a seat at the far end of the table, confusion on the creature’s face the same as ours. It isn’t a Wonderland creature. At least, not one I’ve ever seen. With a face more akin to a squid and a body that is mostly human, it’s a strange sight to see.
“I don’t know,” I admit, glancing sideways at Clara. The delicate crown sitting on her head shines in the light of the tearoom, the yellow diamonds catching. She’d insisted she didn’t want anything flashy, and I’d wanted something large and pronounced like my hat. In the end, we’d compromised. Now, the crown is more like a tiara than anything else, the large jewels making me happy when I get to place it on her head every day. They’re cut to look like skulls, but they don’t look intimidating on Clara. No, Clara is the kindest person I’ve ever met, even with a crown sporting diamond skulls. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“How can that be?” She grabs a teacup and sets it on the plate to her left, helping to serve the Wonderland creature there that lacks the fine motor skills to pour the tea. She does so without the creature having to ask, already sensing its unease. She smiles at it gently, kindly. Clara was made to be the Empress. “I know I haven’t been here long, so there’s bound to be creatures or people I haven’t met, but you’re an old man. You should know everyone.”
I growl. “Keep calling me old man, Clara Bee, and I’ll put you over my knee.”
She shoots me a wicked smile and takes a sip of her own tea. Chamomile; one of my favorites. “That’s precisely why I call you old man,” she teases. “Old man.”
My face twitches with my effort to hide my smile but it’s a losing battle. I can never hold back with Clara, my Mad Hattress.
“It seems we have a conundrum,” Clara murmurs, “because I’ve gotten reports of strange creatures showing up in Wonderland, a handful of reports.”
“Like the squid man?” I don’t ask where she gets her reports from. Flam and Doe are still in Wonderland, preparing to go after White when they’re ready. There are other creatures as enamored with Clara as I am. Some of them come as often as possible to sit at the tea table just to be near her. No doubt, she gets her reports from them.
Shaking her head, she sets her teacup back down and sighs. “Not like him. He’s the first I’ve seen, but someone else mentioned a flying ape-like creature. Flam said he ran into a regular human the other day. The poor fool was drunk as can be so Flam just redirected him back through the doors with the spare key White left him. There’s been lots of reports of odd animals.”
I narrow my eyes, thinking. “That’s strange. Very strange, indeed.”
“That’s it?” Clara raises her brow at me, and even though she’s wearing a crown and a yellow outfit fit for a Queen, she still looks just as approachable as she’d been when she walked into Wonderland in a pantsuit. My Clara Bee. “That’s all you have to say?”
“If you think I know every answer to know, you’ll be sorely mistaken. I’m only a mere Hatter and fool, and I have no idea what’s been taken.”
“So,” she says, rolling her eyes, “you’re useless.”
“I wouldn’t say useless,” I purr, leaning closer and stroking my hand up her thigh. Though she’s the Empress now, Clara mostly refuses to be what you’d expect. Instead of a large, obnoxious dress, she’s wearing a pair of black leather pants, her top a canary yellow contraption that’s more like a coat with the back half of the dress sewn in. She wears her combat boots, claiming they’re far more sensible than some other stupid shoes. The whole get-up gives her the appearance of a giant sexy honeybee, though I haven’t told her that. Later, I have every intention of seeing if she tastes as sweet as she looks.
Though fire dances in her eyes, she raises her brow and focuses on the table before us, back towards the squid man. He’s not alive. He’s here for the tea party, which means after he wandered into our land, he met death. I hate to think of how the poor confused creature met his fate.
“Hello,” Clara calls to him, and his eyes focus on her. “Welcome to the tea party. Will you tell us where you’ve come from?”
The creature speaks, but the sound is garbled. Clara and I look at each other in equal confusion. I don’t know what language that is but it’s not something I’ve ever heard. It almost sounds like he had a mouth full of water and swished it around to make the noises.
“Well, that certainly answered the question,” I murmur, bemused. Who’d have thought the strange creature didn’t even speak a language we could recognize?
Clara shoots me a glare before focusing on the creature again. “I’m sorry. I don’t speak your language. Can you show us? Or draw a picture?”
Tentacles drape down the front of the creature, glistening as if he just came from the ocean. They soak the material of his shirt, showing strange symbols through the cloth. I don’t recognize a single one. That creature isn’t from Wonderland, and I don’t know where he’s from. So many strange things are happening in Wonderland lately, I’d be worried I was losing my mind if I hadn’t already lost it long ago.
I reach for my teacup to take a sip of the tea that never grows cold, but my fingers only meet empty air. I look down in confusion while Clara continues to try communicating with the creature, searching for my teacup. I find it three seats away, definitely not where I left it. There’s no one sitting there that could have taken it, and most creatures know better than to take the cup with a black skull painted on the side of it.
“Clara—”
“I think he’s saying something about the water,” sh
e says, thinking I’m talking about the squid man, but I’ve already dismissed him in favor of this new conundrum.
Clara’s cup begins to move slowly away from her, even as her fingers reach out to pick it up, missing it by inches as it slides away.
“Clara,” I say again, staring at the cup with furrowed brows. And then more of the cups begin to slide.
“I feel like it’s a language we can learn—”
“Clara!”
She jerks and turns towards me, finally realizing she still hasn’t picked up her cup and that my voice is harder than normal. “What’s wrong?” And then her eyes see the same thing I am. “What in the hell—”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had this happen before.”
There are only three creatures at the tea party, but every single one of them stands and backs away as the plates and cups and saucers begin to shake and move. None of us know what’s happening. I certainly don’t, and it’s my table. I should know everything about it.
“What are they doing?” Even though I’m standing, Clara is still seated, until she lifts and reaches for a plate beginning to move. I don’t know why but my instincts tell me not to let her touch it, so I snap out my hand and capture hers.
“Something’s wrong,” I murmur, watching as they slowly begin to move towards the center of the table, shaking, sliding, rumbling.
“What is it?” she breathes as I pull her from her seat and push her a step back. I see her reach for the King Breaker on her hip, the massive gun always at her side no matter what she’s doing. It feels like overkill to reach for such a massive weapon over china but who am I to correct her? It isn’t like I know what’s happening.
Something zings along my skin, like a livewire, making my hair stand on end, and I push Clara slightly behind me. The other tea party goers chitter and converse in their languages, just as confused as we are.
“Is this part of the tea party?” a toad asks from his position. “I didn’t expect it to be so strange.”
“No,” I answer honestly. I won’t lie to a creature on their way to the Hereafter. “No, this isn’t part of the tea party.”
Clara curls her fingers around my bicep, holding on in case all hell broke loose. The china all moves into a pile in the center of the table, tumbling over each other, and then they grow quiet. I’m tense, waiting, and when nothing immediately happens, I relax and grin down at Clara.
“Well, that was a bit anticlimax, wasn’t it?” As if my words are the trigger, a single teacup rattles down the table, my black skull painted on the side glistening. For a second, it sits there, spinning, and then something I could never anticipate happens.
Legs. The teacup suddenly sprouts legs. Eight of them to be exact.
“What the fuck?” Clara says, her eyes wide, and if it wasn’t such a tense situation, I would have teased her for her words. My Clara Bee rarely curses, and when she does, it’s moments like this where it feels necessary.
Hearing her voice, the spider-like cup turns, and little beady eyes glisten under the light, focusing right on us. It lets out a god-awful high-pitched screech and starts to scramble towards us, all eight legs working and making it move faster than I expect.
I panic. Teacups have no right to attack us. Especially not my teacup. I’m drawing my sword, prepared to chop it into tiny pieces—all the wasted tea! —when the bang echoes around the room, making my eardrums ring. The tiny teacup shatters beyond belief, too many pieces to ever be glued back together. I could have lived with a chipped cup.
I scowl and turn towards Clara Bee, her arm outstretched with the King Breaker pointed at the now sizeable chunk missing from my table. “Really?”
“What?” she asks innocently, holstering the weapon. “I don’t like spiders.”
“So you blow up my teacup and put a hole in my table?”
“I could have set it on fire,” she points out. “I didn’t. I’d call that a win.”
“I just don’t understand why it—” did that, I finish in my brain, but I’m already distracted. Every other piece of china begins to rattle on the table, shaking around, legs sprouting from the porcelain, and I stare at it with wide eyes. “What the—”
Clara’s fingers tighten in my coat a split second before she pulls her revolver out again, glancing towards me. “Do I have your permission to fire, Hatter?” Even in such an insane situation, she still teases me.
“Permission granted,” I growl, drawing my blade and climbing onto the table. “Just don’t hit me or else I’ll force you to tend to my every need while I heal.”
Clara snorts. “Poor old man Hatter. Not up to battle like he used to be.”
I punt a teacup off the table, using my sword like a baseball bat to send the piece shattering against the floor. The pieces all clamber towards me, mouths suddenly open to take bites out of my leg. “When we finish this, I’m going to show you just how old I am, Clara Bee,” I growl, smashing another spider cup with my boot as Clara fires her weapon. The bullet sails a hairbreadth away from my leg before knocking out a whole group of the china. All that spilled tea, I lament, hitting more.
“Don’t sprain a muscle,” she warns, grinning as she fires again.
Just for that, I let two teacups pass me to scramble towards her. Her screech reaches my ears and makes me laugh. Even as she easily smashes them into thousands of pieces with the barrel of her gun, she manages to growl at me.
The next time she fires the King Breaker, the bullet is just a little closer, but she never hits me.
No matter how much she may be tempted to.
Chapter Thirteen
The Dark Side of the island is far different from the side we live on. Where our side is dark still, there’s life. The trees are green. The grass is lush. The creatures are whole.
None of that is what the Dark Side is like.
For as long as I can remember, the Lost have always lived on the other side of the island, in this wasteland of death and decay. I used to think it was strange that they chose the place, but I learned later they were almost compelled towards it. It’s something to do with the magic that fundamentally shifts in them the moment they set foot on Neverland. Just like Wendy’s brothers no doubt went through, every Lost had to become Lost in the first place, and then travel through the island to get to the Dark Side. Most make it. Some met their ends before ever reaching others like them.
“You can stop trying to cut through with your claws,” I warn March, raising my brow at him. The Lost are carrying us through the forest of rotting trees and toward their camp, the net hanging from branches a few hold on their shoulders. Most have the smaller horns that represent the weaker Lost, but at least three of the ones escorting us to their camp have large horns, the kind that comes with power.
“I will not be caged,” March growls. It should have been ridiculous, smashed as we are inside the netting, hardly any room to breath let alone attempt to cut the net, but somehow, March still manages to look fierce and deadly.
“March.” I curl my fingers around his forearm, and he pauses, meeting my eyes. “Stop. You won’t cut through those, no matter what you try.”
“What kind of sorcery is this?” March studies the vines closer, scowling.
“The Neverland kind. The Tribe uses similar magic. There’s only one creature not of the tribe that could accomplish it, even though he shouldn’t be able to.” Though how he now has the power, I can only assume it’s from the magic he’s taking from the heart.
“The Crocodile you mentioned?”
I nod and peer through the netting just in time to see the large cage they intend to put us in. It’s made from tree branches, which should be an easy prison to escape, but I see the same yellow shine on the cage and hiss through my teeth. This isn’t going to be easy at all.
The Lost carrying us unceremoniously between them toss us inside the cage, net and all, before latching the door behind us. We slam into the bottom of the cage hard before someone outside pulls and lifts us into th
e air, dangling us over the camp for all the Lost to see. So many of them gather to whoop and holler up at us and I snarl in return. March, on the other hand, grows silent and looks over the Lost, studying them, a juxtaposition between the savagery he’d sported only moments before when attempting to tear through the net.
“There’s so many of them,” I breathe, curling my fingers around the cage and I get a small shock for the effort from a Lost with a weapon. It only makes me angrier, and the desire to maim, to tear them to shreds is strong. But it seems they don’t intend to let us just stay in the cage happily.
One of the Lost pushes through some sort of stick. At first glance, it’s nothing more than a sharpened branch, so I don’t immediately react. Pointy sticks don’t bother me. That’s my mistake. The tip touches my skin and sends a large jolt through my body, as if someone harnesses lightning in the staff. It knocks me on my ass, and I tumble backwards, but March’s arms come around me a second later and keep me from slamming into the bottom. The Lost who hit me touches March, but he hardly reacts, his brow raised. I know he can feel the same force they used on me, the same force that still has me blinking my eyes to clear the fog, because I can feel it channeling through his body. But he hardly seems to react.
“There’s nothing you can do to me worse than anything I’ve already been put through,” March growls when another manages to stab him with a sharpened stake. He doesn’t even move, taking the hits, as if it’s a walk in the park. Each time, he heals completely, no sign of being injured to begin with on his skin.
Finally, the haze clears in my eyes and I sit up, ready to snatch the staffs, but I don’t see one coming from the opposite side, so many Lost poking and prodding at us, howling, hooting, that I don’t see it coming until March is grabbing me and taking the blow meant for me, the current running through his body. For a brief second, I smell burnt fur before it dissipates, and I hiss at him.
“I’m immortal, too, Hare! Stop protecting me like a damsel in distress!”
Fierce as a Tiger Lily (Daughters of Neverland Book 2) Page 7
