BONUS SAMPLE CHAPTER
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HANSEL AND GRETEL
Naughty Fairy Tales
Rose Wulf
Copyright ? 2020
Sample Chapter
Chessa wiped her brow, her chest heaving, before she wrapped her hand around the shaft of an expended arrow and yanked.
Dark green blood oozed, slow and thick, from the jagged hole, but the beast in front of her didn’t budge.
Trolls were strong, and ugly as hell, but they tended to die pretty thoroughly when their heads were separated from their torsos.
Seriously, though, an exploding arrow? It was such a waste.
“What the fuck’s takin’ you so long, Gretel? We got bodies to burn,” her charming partner called to her from several paces back.
Finding a slightly-less soiled spot on her cloth, Chessa wiped off the arrowhead as she stood and turned around enough to face him.
She narrowed her eyes at him, barely remembering to use his formal handle even after all the time they’d worked together.
“Was the explosive spell honestly necessary, Hansel? We just bought these arrows.”
Her partner of the past decade rolled his annoyingly-handsome jade green eyes, as if he were surprised at her complaint.
“It worked, didn’t it? Damn motherfucker won’t be raiding anymore orphanages, will he?
” They both knew Chessa had no comeback to that.
“Then quit complainin’, cheap ass. We’ll just buy more. ”
Mindful of the village men approaching with wheelbarrows, Chessa bit back her initial reply.
She knew he was right, technically, but it irked her.
Why was she more money-conscious than him, when he was the one from the middle of practically nowhere, anyway?
She let out a breath and slid the arrow into the quiver over her back.
This was an eternal argument between them.
There would be no resolution this afternoon.
She wouldn’t besmirch the reputation of the Hansel and Gretel Academy by falling into a shameful argument mere minutes after dispatching the monsters they’d been sent to slaughter.
Maybe, someday, Katz’s temper would calm down.
She snorted under her breath as she went to greet the trio of villagers. Right. And maybe one day I’ll wake up skinny.
Never. Going. To. Happen.
“We ... brought the supplies you asked for,” the nearest of the men said, slowly, as Chessa approached. He indicated the wheelbarrows full of wood and paper debris, as well as a barrel which she assumed contained their flammable agent.
The youngest man, drawing the second wheelbarrow, asked, “Are you sure it’s safe?”
Chessa opened her mouth to respond, but a warm presence moved up behind her and a gruff voice cut off what she might have said.
“Tch, of course it’s safe,” Katz said. As he moved up to her side, she saw him jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Those bastard trolls are dead. Or are you fucking blind?”
The villagers gaped at him.
Only her time with him kept her from cringing at his crude way of speaking to their clients.
“Hansel’s right,” she said instead, keeping her gaze forward.
“Now we burn the bodies, not to keep them dead, but to cleanse the tainted soil beneath their corpses. This way, your village can rest in peace tonight.”
As the villagers broke into relieved tears and expressions of gratitude, Katz leaned close and whispered in her ear. “Don’t you get tired of givin’ that line, Tiny?”
Chessa drew a breath. Was he actually trying to pick a fight? He knew how she felt about that nickname!
Katz straightened and smacked his oversized hands together, startling the villagers and once again preventing her from responding. “Do what Gretel says an’ we’ll be out of here before sunset. Got it?”
They chorused their understanding and he twisted around to move the bodies, murmuring the incantation for physical enhancement as he went.
Because he was stubborn and insisted on moving the bodies by himself, even when they were oversized beasts.
Whether that was because he thought he was sparing his delicate female partner the gruesome work or because he didn’t want to deal with the quote-annoying villagers more than he had to, Chessa wasn’t sure.
She left him to it, as she always did, and proceeded to direct the village men.
She and Katz had been doing this for a decade, give or take a month, so by the time he was done she’d managed to get everything ready.
No matter how often they bickered, ultimately the Academy had been right in pairing them.
They worked well together. She liked to think a more fragile woman would take issue with the way he acted, and that it was her strength of spirit that had landed her in such a powerful partnership.
Not that Katz was the only one who could kick monster butt—he was just louder and generally more abrasive about it.
Chessa stepped back as the troll bodies went up in flame, sizzling, popping, and snapping in a familiar song.
Thick, acrid smoke lifted straight up into the air.
Every few seconds flickers of greens and browns danced through the cloud of grayish-black, as the leftover magic in the trolls’ bodies returned to the earth.
A heavy arm wrapped around her shoulders, tilting her slightly sideways into a strong, warm body. “It’s been a long fuckin’ day.” Katz’s voice was quiet, almost reflective. He was often this way during the bonfires.
She screwed up her nose and pushed him off her. “You stink.”
He angled his head to stare down at her from under his sweaty, dark blond bangs. “Gee, can’t imagine why.” The sarcasm in his tone could have fileted a shark.
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Hansel, let’s leave them to celebrate.” They wouldn’t get paid this night, anyway.
Katz flicked his gaze back to the fire for a moment before grunting and turning to follow after her.
His longer legs brought him up to her side, then half a step ahead, within seconds.
As always, that was where he held himself until they reached the inn where they’d been allocated to stay for this particular mission.
Chessa stripped off the quiver after Katz shut the door behind them and said, “You can clean up first. You need it more than I do.”
“You obviously need to work harder, then,” he teased, tossing his weapons belt onto his bed as he walked past it. “But thanks for your generosity, Chess.”
She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue at his broad-shouldered back as it disappeared into the bathing room.
“Saw that!”
“You did not!”
Chessa moved to the drawer she’d secured their money pouch in, removed the warding, and extracted the pouch.
She quietly counted the funds they had left as the old pipes in the building hummed to life, bringing water to the bathing room.
They had enough for another bundle of arrows, of course, and she had every faith that the villagers would pay the balance due come morning.
But it was always good to know how much they had, in order to properly prioritize how to spend it.
Knowing Katz would never just tell her if his favorite bladed weapons were damaged, Chessa decided to use this opportunity to inspect his equipment.
So she returned the money to the drawer and moved to his bed, carefully drawing first the long blade, then the shorter, thicker, one.
She inspected each in turn for nicks or signs of wear and determined that while the machete could use sharpening, neither was in true disrepair.
Maintaining his equipment was his responsibility—and he was good about it—so she set the items back down and moved away from his side of the room before she could get caught.
They’d been working together, and living together, for a long time, but they still had boundaries. Their partnership worked so well arguably because of their boundaries.
Chessa went up to the half-sized mirror, noting the cracks along the edges once again, and inspected herself with a small wince. Katz could have told me I looked like a mess!
She made an effort to put her dark hair up before a battle, even though she never let it grow more than an inch past her shoulders, but it had been mostly tugged out on one side.
Her hair was horribly mussed, despite the tight bun she’d twisted it into earlier.
And, was that—oh, gods, she had troll blood in her hair!
It was no wonder the village men had listened to her so readily for a change.
The dark green substance had dribbled down the side of her face—she did actually remember that—and caked onto her skin.
Like an extra coating of makeup. Her actual makeup was fine for the most part, though her mascara had smeared a little.
She’d at least anticipated that. There was also a nasty bruise beginning to form along the curve of her jaw, from where she’d taken an almost direct hit from the smallest of the trolls.
Chessa reached up and tenderly prodded the sore spot at the base of her cheek.
Yep, that hurt. It’d probably be a pretty combination of purple and green by morning.
She sighed. That’s what the face powder’s for, right?
She’d have to use a lot, though. Again. It was a shame they were forbidden from using magic for things like ‘hide the ugly battle bruises’ illusion spells.
But she understood why. It was the same reason she sometimes heard people whispering about them behind their backs.
There was a fine line between the Hansels and Gretels and the witches, warlocks, and other magical creatures that they hunted. A line people not trained for years, not experienced with their line of work, could easily misunderstand. After all, Hansels and Gretels used magic in combat, too.
“Wonderin’ why no one’s painted your portrait yet, Tiny?”
Chessa jumped, both startled at the voice and embarrassed that she hadn’t heard him leave the bathing room, and found his smirking reflection in the mirror.
“You know I hate when you call me that.” Even though, with him standing almost directly behind her, it was painfully obvious how much smaller than him she was.
Her forehead just barely cleared his shoulders.
Still, she narrowed her blue eyes on him, daring him to say it again.
Damn him and his six-foot-one-inch height.
And how it towered over her measly five-foot-four-inches.
He’d clearly relaxed too much in his bath, because amusement shone back at her. “Why do you think I do it?”
Ugh. No matter how much time passed, he insisted on being a jerk. “Why didn’t you tell me about the blood in my hair?”
Katz shrugged and moved away, digging a change of clothes from the chest of drawers nearest his bed.
It reminded her that he was walking around in nothing but a towel that had seen better days and looked to be barely clinging to his hips.
“Didn’t see the point. You’d start actin’ all self-conscious, which would get on my nerves, and we had a good flow goin’ out there. Didn’t wanna break it.”
Chessa tore her gaze away from the rippling muscles of his back and took a deep breath. She thought over his reply. He wasn’t entirely wrong. Damn.
“Drained out my nasty bathwater,” Katz continued. “I assumed you’d wanna go next.”
Right. Bath. She did want to bathe, especially with the troll blood stuck to her face.
“Yeah, thanks.” She unwound her own belts, her daggers thumping heavily on her mattress, and stripped off her dirtied, black-leather knuckle gloves before turning toward the necessary room. “Did you leave me a towel?”
“What, you don’t want mine?” Katz’s towel sailed through the air in her direction.
Chessa instinctively batted it away. “Katz!”
His deep, booming laughter echoed through the cramped space, practically chasing her into the bathing room.
Chessa released a breath as she leaned against the closed door.
She looked around the room, distracting her racing heart with taking in the scene in front of her.
A large basin-tub, intricately connected to a series of pipes and levers, took up most of the space.
There was a small dresser and mirror against the wall, the decorator’s idea of a vanity she presumed, and beside the oval mirror were two stacked shelves.
One was bare, the other held a single folded towel.
Across from the door, high along the wall, was an open-air window for ventilation.
Chessa straightened and set about filling the tub, forcing herself not to look too closely at the seals on the pipes as she fiddled with the levers.
She set in the cork once the temperature was satisfactory, then began unbuckling and stepping out of her clothes.
At least she’d had the foresight to kick off her boots when they’d first returned, but she probably could have set her corset-styled chest plate on the bed, too.
Oh well. The tub was almost full by the time she was done, so she found the soap and moved the bath towel to the hook on the door—and came up short.
The bath towel Katz had used was clearly threadbare.
She’d seen dangling strings and chewed up holes along one corner.
Hell, it’d been thin enough she could have practically seen his ass through it if she’d wanted to.
The towel he’d left her, however, was in visibly better condition.
No dangling strings, no holes. It looked ...
decent. It wasn’t the softest, plushest towel she’d ever used, but it was in good shape all things considered.
That had to be a coincidence.
Right?
End of sample chapter