Page 26 of The Never Queen

I sit, stunned, surrounded by these dying men as the man joins Pan and the boys, taking out the assailants with considerable speed and agility.

Whack. Down.

Whack-whack. Down. Down.

Another one curled over, spewing blood.

Kas and Bash are finally free and hurry over to me, bringing me up, sandwiching me between them.

It takes the mysterious stranger all of two minutes to have the dozen or so assailants dead or dying.

Pan and Vane fall in beside us.

The man, the blade still in his grip, comes over into a slant of streetlight.

He’s at least twice my age, late forties, maybe early fifties with the weathered mark of time in the wrinkles around his eyes. Even in the thickening shadows of night, I can see the salt and pepper of his hair and the matching color of his full beard.

Dressed in brown leather pants and a loose gray linen shirt, I think I could easily mistake him as a cosplayer from one of the Renaissance festivals, complete with a brown leather harnessthat crisscrosses over his shoulders where several more weapons are slid into place.

There’s a matching purple stone, or maybe bone shard, hanging from a leather cord around his neck, emanating a soft glow that sends eerie shadows over his face.

“Who are you?” I ask.

The man cleans his dagger, wiping the blade across a felt pad stitched into the thigh of his leather pants. Almost as if he does this so often, he had to specially tailor his pants for the dirty chore.

“Hansel,” Pan says.

It can’t be a coincidence that one myth—Peter Pan—is using the name of a character from another myth.

I turn to Pan. “Like Hansel and Gretel?”

“Yes,” Hansel answers with the deep, resonant voice of a man who has seen some shit and smoked too many cigarettes, dealing with the trauma of it all.

“But what…who…”

“I’ll find Merry. You make sure she’s hidden. They only want her,” Hansel says, nodding at me. “But they’ll kill any of you if you get in their way, so best you hide if you want to stay alive. And not the cottage, not the mansion in the Woods. They’ll look there first and they will send more.”

He turns and immediately the shadows seem to swallow him whole.

“Who are they?” I yell.

“The Witch Killers,” Hansel says over his shoulder.

12

BASH

“Who the hell is Hansel?” Winnie asks once the older man is gone.

Pan waggles his fingers at me. “You bring the phone?”

“No.” I look at Kas. “Did you?”

He sighs, as if he was expecting me to forget, as if he is annoyed that he had to be the one to remember for the two of us as he digs the phone from his pocket.

Pan takes the phone and scrolls through the contacts, searching for John Judy. Once he’s found it, he taps at the call button and a connection is made within seconds. “I need a trash cleanup on Beech Lane....yes, Peter Pan…good.” Then he hangs up.

“Who is John Judy?” Darling glances between us. “And Hansel? Witch Killers? What is going on?”