Chapter 11
WINNIE
There’s no time to question what’s happening. Vane grabs me by the arm and shoves me toward the front door. We spill out, the twins ahead of us, Vane and Pan behind us.
Except we’re quickly cut off.
A dozen figures are closing in on us.
Vane shoves me down as a baseball bat, or what looks like one, comes sailing toward my head. He catches it in the palm of his hand and holds on, yanking the attacker into him. Vane wrestles the weapon away and quickly turns it on the man, whacking him in the head. Down he goes.
I scramble back but a hand catches me by the hair and wrenches me toward the side yard.
Instinctively, I reach for the shadow…
…but nothing is there.
Panic flits through my chest as pain burns through my skull.
The twins are fighting off several assailants.
Pan is fighting with fists while Vane uses the bat.
Why are none of them using their magic? Why can’t I use mine? I know I’m not an expert at it yet, but usually when I’m in trouble, the shadow leaps into action.
I twist around, trying to get leverage but I’m quickly yanked again, losing my footing. And as I go down, I notice a faint purple glow from beneath the man’s black coat.
And it’s almost like whatever light is emanating from it, is buzzing along my skin.
“Let. Me. Go.” I get my feet beneath me and dig my heels in.
A fist connects with my face.
Stars burn behind my eyes.
The sharp metallic tang of blood coats my tongue.
My breathing quickens as my mind races. What the fuck should I do?
Come on, Shadow. Help me!
But that familiar pulse of the darkness is just gone.
I’m in trouble. I’m in serious trouble.
And the boys are not fairing any better.
Bash is down on his knees, someone kicking him in the ribs.
Kas is fighting off his own attacker while trying to help his brother. And Pan and Vane are fighting off multiple people with bats.
I’m dragged farther, the grass giving way to pavement. A car door opens.
Fuck.
The panic kicks up.
It’s now or never.
Just as the man pivots to shove me into the back of the waiting car, I sink to my knees like dead weight, putting me at the perfect vantage point to punch him in the balls.
His grip on me immediately falls away, and I hit the pavement, scooting backward as he curls into a ball, howling.
I think I’m free, but the first man is quickly replaced by a second, my sweatshirt balled in his fist, wrenching me around.
Fuck.
Fuck.
A third shadow appears, and it feels like my chances of escaping are dwindling by the second.
Until the third shadow takes out the man holding me with a left-handed hook. And as the man goes down, the mysterious third shadow produces a gleaming dagger, sinking it into the man’s chest.
As he falls to the pavement, blood gurgles up his throat.
The man I punched in the balls finally rouses himself, only for the blade to find him next.
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 harness that 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.