Pan's Revenge (25 page)

“
You.
Did.
What?
” both girls shout at me at the same time.

“What? I had to keep him out of the way or he
would have ruined everything again. You heard the pixie,” I defend
myself to Angel. “He wanted to use you for revenge.”

“Because he was hurt,” she counters with way
too much affection than he deserves and places both her hands on my
forearm. “Think of the shock he must have been in when he found
himself grown up one morning. Together, we certainly can talk sense
into him. We must go back and release him. Now!”

“No way! I only have magic stuff left for one
last trip back to your world. I’m not wasting that on Peter Pan.” I
pause and clench my teeth then mumble, “The ropes weren’t tied too
tightly anyway. I’m sure the bastard could free himself by now. For
all you know, he could already be back in Neverland.”

And that’s
the exact reason why I want to take Angel to the fairies as soon as
possible. His plan to steal my girl from me failed. Who can say
with what he comes up next to get back at me. I need to talk to him
alone and sort things out between us. But finding a way to keep
Angel with me is of greater importance right now. I’m not giving
her up. Not now. Or ever.

JAMIE’S STUBBORNNESS SURPRISES me. I know he
and Peter had issues in the past, but last time I saw them together
in Neverland, they made a great team. What does it take to make
them both see in the other again what they saw when they helped me
go back to London?

As if he can read my thoughts, Jamie says,
“It’s no use Angel. Too many things have happened since you were
gone.”

“
Fine. Be
that way,” I mutter, but if he thinks for a moment I’ll give up
trying, he’s in for a surprise. And then I see them. A set of blue
eyes staring at us from behind a line of bushes. My heart starts
pounding like elephant feet, because I surely know those eyes. I’ve
seen them all morning when gazing at Jamie. Did I ever notice how
much alike the brothers really look?

None of the others has noticed Peter watching
us yet, but he certainly heard every word we spoke. So what if he’s
here to put things right with everyone? He hurt Tami when he sent
her away, and from all I know about the two of them, they were
inseparable for so many years. He must miss her like she obviously
misses him.

And Jamie?
Now that I’m here, I just
know
that I can make the two of
them talk things out. They don’t hate each other. They might think
they do, but this feeling deep inside me tells me
otherwise.

I almost blurt out Peter’s hiding and point a
finger but, just in time, I hold back. He’s hurt and—by God, I know
how stubborn he can be. It must run in their family.

When Tami
takes over convincing Jamie that they must find Peter fast before
anything bad happens, I seize the chance and grab my still wet
sweater from Jamie. He throws me a questioning look, which I try to
return with a reassuring one of my own. “I’m going to hang this
over some twigs so it can dry in the sun.”

He strokes my cheek, certainly glad that I’m
no longer angry with him, and lets me go.

Like I expected, Peter ducks the moment I
walk over to the bushes, but he doesn’t fly away. Good, so he’s
ready to talk. Busying myself with the sweater, I keep my chin low
and whisper, “Peter, I know you’re here. Look, everyone is ready to
t—”

I don’t get to finish, because Peter grips my
wrist hard and pulls me into the bushes, one hand clapped over my
mouth. The sweater drops to the ground. “I’m sorry, Angel, but you
don’t leave me a choice,” he hisses in my ear, wraps his arm around
me and shoots up into the sky.

We’ve zoomed
up a couple hundred feet before Tami and Jamie even realize what
happened. Both cry out our names, but I can’t see them below,
because Peter is going way too fast. Everything is just one massive
blur.

While Jamie’s voice fades, Tami’s follows us
for a few seconds from an ever growing distance. She can fly but
not nearly as fast as Peter. Soon we shake her off. The thought to
fight Peter and wrestle myself free crossed my mind for a minute,
but if he drops me from this height, there’s no chance I’ll
survive, which renders me stiff in his arms. Only when he takes his
hand off my mouth, I give an ear piercing shriek. “Jamie! Tami!
Help me, I’m here!”

“You can stop that. They won’t hear you. No
one will.” The ice in Peter’s voice scares me.

The way he holds me with my back against his
chest, I can see the jungle racing by below. We pass the volcano to
our right and fly farther east until we reach a formation of three
mountains in a triangle. In one of them, right beneath the very
peak, is a cave. Peter chooses to land there and sets me down.

I spin around
and slap his face hard the moment he takes his arms away. At the
smack, his head jerks to the side.

“
Dammit,
Peter! What do you think you’re doing?” Then I gasp with shock. At
Mermaid Lagoon, I only saw his eyes when he hid in the bushes. Now
that he’s standing in front of me, my lips start to tremble.
Wrinkles are etched around his eyes and streaks of gray flash in
his light brown hair. Peter has aged again. At least fifteen years
from last time I saw him.

He clenches his teeth and gives me a mean
scowl. “You better not do that again, or I’ll rethink my plan for
you and shove you off that cliff right now.”

“What?” My voice cracks at the one word.

“You’re a bloody betrayer. You act like we’re
friends.” He gives me a tight, hurt and sinister smile. “But look
whose side you’re on again. You always end up with Hook.”

I take a step back as he spits the words at
me. There’s so much hurt in his eyes that it squeezes my chest. But
when he comes forward, forcing me to back farther off against the
wall, and braces himself on his hands at the rock face at either
side of my head, all I feel is fear.

The smell of
his leather jacket creeps up my nose, as he glares down at me. “I
thought you liked me, but all you ever did was destroy my life.
Form the moment you fell to Neverland, everything changed. You
changed it. He did it all because of
you
!”

“Peter, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for
this—”

“Shut up!” His yell echoes off the walls
inside the cave and makes me cringe.

Suddenly his eyes glaze over. He strokes his
fingers down my cheek and dips his forehead to mine. “Forgive me,
Angel. I just—” Pushing himself away from the wall he paces to the
middle of the ten by ten feet place that’s all gray rock. Clawed
fingers shove through his hair. “It’s so hard to be inside this
head. This is not my body. And not my mind!” He jerks around,
glaring at me, broken and lost.

I’m still trying to catch my breath from the
panic he unleashed in me. Pressing against the wall, I swallow
hard. “Come back to Jamie and Tami with me. We can figure out how
to help you.”

“No!” He rushes toward me once more. “Don’t
you dare trick me again. I’m not going to see my brother.” He
pauses then speaks through a sneer. “Not on his terms anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

His mad grin widens as he nods his head
toward the back corner of the cave. A rope lies on the ground,
together with a slingshot and a sword. Whatever he intends to do
with that, it won’t be anything nice. My panic resurfaces. As we
flew here, I saw the way leading down from the cave. It’s steep and
certainly dangerous, but I could climb down there. Except, Peter
would catch me a thousand times before I even made it ten
steps.

Well aware of how my eyes wandered to the
only way of escape, Peter grabs my arm and pulls me farther to the
back. He’s too strong. All my screaming and fighting is in vain,
when he ties the rope around my wrists.

“And now what?” I shout at him. “What’s your
brilliant plan, Peter Pan? Are you going to keep me prisoner up
here? Is that how you think you can take revenge on me?”

“
Oh, not on
you, dear Angel. I’ll take vengeance on my brother. You’ll only
help me with that.” Pulling hard on the rope, he makes me follow
him to the edge of the cave, then he flies out and loops it around
a tree that grows sideways out of the mountain, next to the cave’s
entrance. It takes him three seconds until he stands in front of me
again. We stare at each other for the length of five breaths. My
eyes certainly grow wider with horror at the way his grin spreads
wider with madness. “Guess what,” he says.

The next instant, I’m ripped away from the
ground, out of the cave and to the side. A terrified shriek escapes
me as all goes so fast. Peter only had to pull on the end of the
rope in his hands to catapult me out. The momentum keeps me swaying
madly for a few seconds. Panic and the pain in my wrists bring
tears to my eyes.

“
Oh God!
Peter! Please, pull me inside again.
Please!
You don’t have to do
this!”

“Have, too.” He ties the rope around a
protruding rock.

I’m hanging
from a tree to the left of the cave, with a two-hundred-meter abyss
beneath me. He left the rope long enough so I can’t reach the tree.
Struggling is the worst I can do, so I keep as still as I can and
fight to breathe again.

Inside the cave’s mouth, Peter sits down on
the stone ground and pulls a small notebook and pen from the back
pocket of his jeans. “Now, what to write to my dear brother?”
Tapping the pen to his pursed lips, he finally lifts his gaze to
mine.

There’s a
sudden change in his look. His mouth parts slightly, his eyes widen
with understanding and shock. Hope takes over me.
Oh Lord
,
he’s going to free me, because he realized what a terrible thing
he’s doing to me.

But a moment later he rubs his brow
vigorously like a child that had to think too hard for too long.
The muscles in his jaw tick as he clamps his teeth together. “It’s
the only way,” he mumbles to himself.

Streams of tears forge down my cheeks.
“Please, Peter. Release me.” I wrap my fingers around the rope
above the tight knot and try to ease the hurting pull on my wrists.
“I didn’t betray you. I am your friend.”

He stares at me and shakes his head. Then he
lowers his gaze to the notebook placed on his thighs and starts to
write. “If you want your girl alive, come and fight.” He cuts me a
quick glance. “How’s that?”

As a message
for Jamie?
No!
“You’re cruel, Peter Pan! It will never
work!”

“You’re right.” His eyes narrow back on the
notebook. He rips off the first page, scrunches it up and tosses it
against the wall. Then he mumbles along as he writes a new line,
“Your life for hers.”

At this moment, we both jerk our heads in the
same direction. Tami’s worried voice drifts to us as she repeatedly
calls out my name.

“Tameeka! I’m here!” I shout hoarsely.

Peter jumps
to his feet. “Stupid little thing. How could she find us here so
fast?” Striding to the back of the cave, he fetches the slingshot
and loads it with a walnut size stone that he picked up from the
ground. He pulls the rubber band until it’s dangerously taut and
aims it at Tami.

“No! No, Peter, don’t do this!” I scream.
“Don’t shoot her. Tami’s your friend!”

Peter hesitates, and so does Tami as she
reaches us. Hovering in front of the cave, her face is full of
horror and regret. Whatever Peter did in the past, she sure never
expected him to raise a weapon against her. It’s breaking her
heart. And mine breaks for hers.

“Peter,” she whispers.

After an endless moment, he lowers the
slingshot and turns, growling, “Go away, Tami. This is not your
concern.”

Tami lands behind him and lifts one hand to
touch his arm.

“I sad go away!” he yells at her, pulling his
arm out of her reach.

Even though she cringes at his harsh voice
she ignores his demand and straightens, asking in the softest tone,
“What’s happening to you?”

“You know very well what’s happening. I’m
growing old. Look at me.” He grabs her shoulders and shakes her
once. “It’s unstoppable and I’m aging faster.”

I don’t know when Tami saw him last or how
old he looked then, but his face now scares her speechless. She
realizes he’s speaking the truth. We both do.

The boy who wouldn’t grow up is going to
die.

And I know this because his hair’s grayer now
than fifteen minutes before.

Silent tears start to trail down Tami’s
cheek. They are drops of sparkling silver. One drips off her jaw
and as it leaves her skin, it turns into a small diamond that
clanks away on the hard stone ground.

“Don’t waste your tears on me,” Peter says in
a much softer voice than before, but no less filled with pain. “I
know it’s going to happen soon. I can’t stop it.” Then the muscles
in his face harden. “But I won’t go down without destroying Hook
first, I swear.”

I sob, but no one hears it.

“No, Peter. I don’t want you to become this
monster,” Tameeka pleads with him, but he pushes her away.

“I don’t care about what you want! Leave me
alone!”

Her entire body starts to shake. I’ve never
seen a girl turn this pale before.

“And since you’re going back to Hook anyway,”
Peter continues, shoving the note he wrote before into her small
hand, “take this with you. Tell him where I am and to come
alone.”

Slowly, the pixie shakes her head. For once
there’s no rain of golden pixie dust. “I won’t help you. You’re
mean and losing yourself. I don’t want to be your friend anymore,
Peter Pan.” She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Not if
you are like this.”