Wonderland (Deadly Lush Book 2)

by Harper Alexander

  A serious expression plastered to his sweat-glistened face, Jayx skirted the cover of the trees and maneuvered quietly closer through the ferns. His gaze cheated to Mother Eve's form – could he even recognize what or who it was, given the mask of web and distortion of her fall? Something in his eyes told Shiloh he knew.

  Where would this lead now that Jayx was in the picture?

  He crouched near the mess of web, reaching out gently to probe the mummified form. Seemingly satisfied it was indeed what he suspected, and that it wasn't about to jump back to life any moment, he half focused back on Shiloh. “What are you doing?”

  Shiloh had never been so happy – or nervous – to see him. Now she wasn't alone to face the vengeful savage queen! But what if he ruined everything?

  She grew both relieved and agitated that he stood between her and the Tribal chieftess.

  Her lips fluttered open, grasping at an explanation. “I'm sorry, I... Lysander told me–”

  “I know what Lysander told you.”

  He did? What, exactly, did he know?

  A sudden feeling like the treetops were watching settled over Shiloh. She peered upward, lowering her voice. “We shouldn't talk here.” The spider-apes could descend at any moment.

  “We shouldn't be here at all,” Jayx countered.

  Did he know about the creatures whose domain they occupied? Had he followed her, or did he know of this place some other way? “How did you find me?”

  “Lysander told me that Mother Eve got caught up in a web during your spat in the wilderness. There's only one creature on the island I've ever seen make webs large enough to catch human prey. They keep to these trees.”

  “Was it that obvious this is where I had come?”

  “After what Ungar revealed...where else?”

  “I couldn't just leave here there.”

  “Shiloh...”

  “I couldn't, Jayx.” The panic was bubbling back up again, now afraid her intentions would all be for nothing, that Jayx would put an end to this foolishness once and for all and the child would die, just like that, and she would be helpless to stop it. That he would act so fast it would be over in an instant, before she could protest.

  That she might see him as a monster if he did it.

  She wasn't sure what scared her most. Losing her grip on the situation when she had gone through such conflict to arrive at that point, or someone she depended on becoming a monster to her if he followed the logical course.

  Don't do it, Jayx. She needed him. Needed to revere him. Where would she be, if she started scorning her mentor? If she begrudged her savior?

  To her relief, Jayx remained a cautious statue, not rushing to exact his take on the situation just yet. “When we started this, you asked if I had any misplaced loyalties that might make me hesitate to take out the Tribal.”

  A swallow slid down Shiloh's throat, thick and lumpy. Yes, yes she had. And now it was coming back to brand her a hypocrite, but she could not deny this burning need to at least diffuse the situation she had affected, until true justice could be decided.

  “This is different,” she said.

  “Worth the risk of the Tribal's driving force being released to return to power?”

  “I didn't plan on releasing her.”

  “I suppose you also didn't plan on a savage tyrant who's been in power for decades overpowering you on this misplaced hostage transport across the island?”

  “Look at her, Jayx. She's useless. I may have cut her down, but I left her wrapped up for a reason.”

  “Look at yourself, Shiloh. You're not exactly in any condition to be assuming responsibility for the transport of savage tyrants, wrapped in cobwebs or otherwise.”

  “And who would have helped me, if I'd tried to raffle off the responsibility?”

  “Precious few.”

  “Exactly. This was on me. No one else would have understood.”

  “You do not catch a hornet in a net, and then change your mind about finishing the job.” Jayx's words were clear and sharp, quickly cutting their way through Shiloh's arguments toward the result she feared. “If you let it live, it will retaliate tenfold.”

  “This is not a bug we're talking about.”

  “We are talking about risk.” He was reaching for his belt knife now, and Shiloh knew her window to deflect a fatal decree was shrinking rapidly. To him it was just an angry wasp caught in a net, and there was no other choice. But to her... Before coming to Paradise, it had been years since she had seen a child survive past a few days old. Where she came from, there were no more infants. No more young children. They had become extinct.

  The notion of a child had sparked the need to nurture and protect new life, and she couldn't ignore it.

  “Jayx, don't.”

  “I get it. This is maternal. You feel very strongly about it. It's impossible for you not to.” He was trying to console her with understanding, his fingers wrapping snugly around the hilt of his dagger.

  Maternal... Shiloh's brows snapped together. “This isn't because I'm a woman. Unless women were created to counteract men's brutish, senseless bloodlust with basic, obsessive values of innocent life.” She felt herself rising unbidden from her crouch, drawing herself up to her full, poised height as possessiveness seeped through her. If she had to, she would lunge to take charge of her hostage before Jayx could deliver his death blow.

  But her tone had risen along with her stance, and the treetops rustled again, this time from obvious animal movement. Both she and Jayx looked up in unison to regard a dozen pairs of brooding ape eyes as the creatures slunk out from their pockets of cover to observe the commotion.

  “Enough,” Jayx said quietly. “We'll discuss it elsewhere.”

  Shiloh edged toward him, watching the apes. There was a whisper of a rustle in the ferns as Jayx gathered the culprit of their debate in his arms. Without any lubricant, the web would stick fast to his body, but so long as it wasn't chaining him to the apes' domain it could be dealt with later.

  They backed out of the spotlight and found a quiet place to regroup. Jayx knelt to lay Mother Eve on a bed of frosty, iridescent clover. Web peeled away from his body in stringy patches, clinging to him, and he pawed at the stuff in an effort to sever the connection. Shiloh watched him for a moment as he only made it worse, and then it started to amass itself into two yarn-like balls in his grasp. He would be hard-pressed to disentangle it from his hands, but it was a start.

  He shook his head, and at first Shiloh thought it was impatience because of the sticky nuisance, but then he said, “We are not going to come to an agreement on this.”

  “We can't just kill her, now.”

  “You can't save everyone, Shiloh,” he reminded her. His jaw carved a hard line, his eyes heavy with the weight of the difficult truth. He would know, more than anyone. All of the Crossers he had abandoned to focus on Shiloh and her band of refugees...

  Their ghosts played through Shiloh's mind. One of the many things already haunting her. And as much as they haunted her, they had to haunt him so much more.

  She blinked it away, trying to shed the guilt. “I'm not trying to save everyone. I just can't have this one be on me.”

  “It isn't, anymore. I'm here.” I'll do it, said his eyes. Cold eyes. Cold like a crisp winter sky.

  “It can't be that easy for you.”

  “Nothing is easy.”

  “Please, Jayx.” Pleading bled into her tone. He was listening to her, anyway. Hadn't reached for his blade again yet. “Where I'm from... A child is a miracle. Killing one would be...unthinkable.”

  He shifted on the balls of his feet, draping his elbows on his knees. “Some might call it merciful.”

  A hot feeling flushed her chest, at odds with the cold pit burrowing in her stomach. What if she couldn't get him to listen to her? “I won't let you do it,” she said, as if she had any power.

  Then again, why didn't she? He wasn't the only one with a big, scary knife. He wasn't the one with a dose of
predatory power running hot in his veins. Wasn't the one with wings, like some glorious, powerful archangel.

  The heat spread up her neck as she drew confidence from her feral reinforcements. She had fought the Tribal Queen, for goodness' sake. She could throw her weight around with a pirate boy.

  “And what exactly were you going to do with her?”

  It was a fair question.

  “I was hoping that would come to me.”

  “So...you have no plan. Just cut the Tribal Queen loose and go from there.”

  When he put it like that, she could not deny how ludicrous it sounded. For an instant she doubted herself, wondering if perhaps she could be suffering a lapse of judgment from remnants of the toxin in her veins. Could she still be unstable, not quite thinking clearly? Jayx had to be wondering the same thing.

  Maybe she'd better not tout any domineering aggression she might still draw from her recent spat under its influence. She would probably do well to play it cool if she didn't want Jayx to dismiss her antics as due to her unstable mental state. She needed him to take her seriously.

  “I'm not trying to save everyone, Jayx,” she repeated. “But like you, I guess I've just found a cause to stick with. We can't create Utopia without protecting the children. You painted an X over my heart for a reason, I know; this is just the one thing I can't ignore. I sailed across the sea with a boy, and he etched something in my heart too. I love that kid. He’s changed the way I see things. What I value. We have to save the children. They are our future.

  “I know you agree on preserving the children because you pitched the same thing to me – about Zack and Starliss. You just painted it like they’d be the only thing left worth saving after we sacrifice our goodness for theirs, when we become monsters to fight the beasts. But I’m not going to unleash the monster, Jayx. Not like you told me. I’m going to dance with it.”

  His intense eyes studied the jungle shadows on her face. What did words like that mean to a wild man? He'd proven himself calculated and civilized, but there was no denying his wild heritage. Of course, along with the feral blood in his veins, there was the big softie Shiloh had seen in him. The petals and rain. Along with the wolf that ran wild, there was the gazelle who lived and breathed the harmony of nature.

  Rain and petals, Shiloh prayed. Give me the rain and petals today.

  Jayx looked at Mother Eve's white-swathed form, bound uselessly among the underbrush.

  “I heard its heartbeat,” Shiloh murmured, recalling the signs that had led her back to the web. “When I first strung her up. I didn't realize it, but it was there, in the back of my mind. And then I had a dream, showing me the path back to the web. Leading me back, like something I was supposed to do. I had to.”

  Jayx took a breath – something that looked like it might have been a sigh, if he had let it out. But instead he held it in, absorbed it. “If you do this, you have to keep her contained.” It was the obvious condition. “You have to keep her contained until the child comes to term. You have to care for her, until the child comes to term. And you know if you take her back to the Dauntless, she will not last.”

  Shiloh's gaze fell sheepishly into the ferns. “Is there anywhere I can take her? Somewhere on the island fitting for the task?”

  “Somewhere you can singlehandedly store and care for an infamous tyrant hostage for the better part of a year? When you've barely started to brave breaching the island yourself?”

  “I'm asking for your help, Jayx.” She felt the unexpected impulse to implore him by shifting closer, reaching up to place her palms on his scruffy cheeks, leveling his gaze with hers. “Please.”

  He was so intense and so thoughtful at the same time. She had no idea if playing off of some questionable intimate connection would serve her well as a persuasive tactic, but somehow it felt like the right move.

  Given the way he searched her eyes, it seemed he was giving her pleading due thought.

  An out-of-place rush of warm butterflies tumbled through her at their nearness, at the way she was standing there cradling his face, probing for some corner of his soul. Sweet golden shores, he was beautiful. Beautiful exactly the same way the wilderness was – rugged and raw and crisp and majestic, all at once.

  Finally, he caved. And not a moment too soon, because she was getting lost in his eyes, in the planes of his face. In the gritty velvet of his beard against her palms. “Then come. If you will not be dissuaded, there is a place. At least for now.” He reached up to pull one of her hands away, and at first Shiloh thought it was to sever himself from her touch, but he turned her hand palm-up to indicate the stain of serum. “Do you have more where this came from?”

  Relieved that he was shifting to her side, Shiloh quickly dug out what was left of the serum, passing it over. Jayx slickened a healthy dose over his hands and arms and scooped Mother Eve back up off the ground.

  “This way,” he said, and, feeling a surge of something that might have been relief, might have been affection, Shiloh picked up the pace in his wake.

  *

  They delved into the woods until a bluff of ivy and diagonally-jutting shrubs rose to block their path, and then they began a long, curving trek along its base. It jutted and swerved until they came to a crumbling stair-like path cut into the cliff, what used to be jade-colored steps now overgrown or moss-covered or cracked into hazardous mosaic stepping stones, and there they began to climb. It was steep going, and the path was slight. Jayx looked far more at ease carrying someone up the rise than Shiloh felt hugging the bluff for dear life with only herself to look after.

  The path wound up and around what proved to be the circumference of a craggy, small mountain. Small only in girth, though, because it wound up, and up, and up, until the treetops fell away beneath them and they entered a halo of mist hanging about the mountain's middle.

  Still they went up, leaving the ring of mist behind for a clear patch, and then hiking in and out of pockets of gloom thereafter.

  Just when Shiloh thought she had seen most of the island, there was some new corner, or level, full of surprises.

  Her curiosity for what lay at the top was overshadowed only by the gripping obsession to keep her attention on the crumbling edge of the pathway.

  It grew harder to breathe the higher they went. Shiloh paused to catch her breath more than once, only to see Jayx hadn't faltered in the slightest, even hampered by another's deadweight, and then she hurried to keep up. Clearly she had a ways to go before she graduated to Unfazable Wild-Woman.

  She blamed it on the unaccustomed weight of her wings, and never having hiked far above sea level in all of her life.

  Her wings gave an excited shiver at the altitude, though, as if this was what they were born for. Cool it, pin-feathers. This is not your Unveiling Parade.

  What it did turn out to be was the unveiling of another quaint wonder. The crumbling cliff stairs ended on a mossy plateau, and rising from the plateau was no less than what could only be called a miniature palace. Almost an over-sized gazebo, but for the solid walls that sheltered the main dome from the elements, and the few smaller adjoining gazebos clustered around the centerpiece. Creamy pillars and rose-tinted stone peeked through a layer of lush vine coverage, long-legged sandstone crane statues guarding the entrance to the little fortress.

  Shiloh gaped. “What is this?”

  “One of a few private suites guests could have reserved, if Paradise had ever gone as planned.”

  “And you don't...spend more time here?”

  “What time? It isn't exactly on the main road where my energies can be well-spent.”

  Meaning, no one would ever get rescued, if he whiled away his days in solitary bliss at his own personal hilltop retreat. But it was beautiful. Shiloh was not so sure she wouldn't tune out the world and leave newcomers to fend for themselves, given the option to hunker down in such tranquil luxury here in the clouds. It almost couldn't even be lumped in with Paradise, so far removed was it from the troubles on the ground
. It had its own atmosphere.

  “This is where I first came, when I parted ways with the Tribal.” Jayx turned on the plateau to face her, his dreadlocks fluttering in the foggy breeze of the heights. “I have never brought anyone else here before.”

  25 – Sacred Ground

  Jayx kicked in the heavy stone door that stood ajar at the fortress's shaded entrance. The smooth, blue-gray slab swung just wide enough to admit them. Stepping past the threshold, Shiloh took in the quiet interior. Not a lot of dust or foliage made it up to this height, so everything was remarkably well-kept. Only a few stray dry leaves littered the turquoise and gold mosaic tile; an empty nest haunted one windowsill. It all felt so dormant and untouched. There was a lounge bench that had once been nicely upholstered, but of course time itself had faded and aged it. An ornate oaken table with curvaceously carved mermaid-fin legs stood against one wall, a tarnished candelabra with candles toppled from their holsters standing on the tabletop. A huge painting of the ocean at sunset, all iridescent blues and aquas and rich pastels, hung on the wall above the table. It looked so real. Shiloh caught herself staring, entranced by the way the oranges and yellows seemed to glow, the ocean details flashing silver as her vantage point shifted, like an actual rippling tide.

  Jayx laid Mother Eve to rest in a corner, and undid a belt of rope he had cinched around his waist. “I don't suppose you brought any reinforcements for keeping her secure?”

  Shiloh tore her gaze from the magical painting. For a moment, the fortress looked extra dark, as if her eyes had to adjust back to the shadows from the glow of the sunset. A chilly breeze gusted through the open window, tickling her feathers against her back.

  She shivered. “Of course I did. I didn't come out here completely unprepared.” Shrugging off her pack, she dug around for the rope she'd brought. She grimaced as she rummaged past the bottle of lubricant; it was all but empty. “But we did use all my anti-stick serum, so if we don’t want to transfer the snare to ourselves when we get her out of that web…” It would be counter-productive to free Mother Eve if all they accomplished was getting caught up in the stuff themselves.