Chapter 23
WINNIE
Everything happens all at once.
I’m your father.
Then a knife to the heart.
Pain lances through me and all the feeling leaves my legs, causing my knees to buckle.
I drop, all dead weight, and Hansel lifts the crossbow in his hand.
THUNK.
The arrow shoots past me and sinks itself into the Witch Killer’s head.
She drops me as she falls.
I hit the pavement, crumpled and gasping with a wet rasp of air.
My father.
My father?
Hansel and Pan rush over to me.
“The bone fragments,” Hansel says. He shouts over his shoulder. “Water neutralizes them!”
Fighting ensues.
Pan’s face appears above me, haloed by tears flooding my vision.
“Darling.” Terror pinches around his eyes. “Can you hear me?”
Yes, I want to say, but nothing comes out.
Someone howls in pain.
Hansel joins Vane and the twins, fighting the other Witch Killers.
“Darling? Winnie.”
I want to claw at Pan’s shirt, desperate to hold on to something that feels real as the world slips further and further away, but there’s no feeling in my hands. I can’t seem to connect to my body anymore and the panic rushes in.
I’m dying.
“That’s the last one!” Bash shouts.
I blink but there’s only darkness.
“Come on, Win.” Vane’s hand slips into mine and the Shadow rushes in like a faithful dog, its energy frenzied and urgent. Sensation trickles back in.
I take a gasp of air.
Blood gurgles in my throat.
“Get her out of here,” Hansel says. His voice is muffled like my head is buried in yards of cotton. “There will be more.”
I’m lifted up, cradled in Peter Pan’s arms and carried to the SUV. Inside the warmth of the interior, some of the panic subsides.
I think Vane gets in behind the wheel. I can sense the twins, but I don’t know where they are.
“What about you?” Vane asks.
“I’ll meet you there,” is Hansel’s reply.
The engine turns over. A car door slams shut.
“Is she still conscious?” Vane asks, the tires squealing against the pavement as Vane races out of the lot.
“Yes,” Pan answers, his thumb brushing over my neck where my heart is thumping rapidly.
I think the blade has been pulled from my chest, though I don’t know when or how or by who.
The pain is fading, the Shadow like a balm on my nerve endings.
Am I dying? I think and the Shadow pulses behind my eyes. No. I won’t let you die.
I can feel Vane’s answering relief.
Beside me, Kas asks, “Did you know?”
Pan braces me against him as Vane turns a sharp corner.
“Not definitively,” Pan answers. “But the question has been running through my head since Hansel first arrived.”
“This explains why they’ve gone to such lengths to hunt Darling down,” Bash says from the front. “If they hate witches, just think how much they’d hate one of their own being the father of one.”
“I’m going to destroy them,” Pan says above me. “Every last one of them.”
Darkness creeps into my vision as the rush of the vehicle lulls me into unconsciousness.