***
8
***
Slightly had once had a dream about blood.
He remembered they had all been sitting in the underground house; him, and Curly, and Caps, and Nibs, and Ledger. Peter's fairy (who had been a different fairy back then, but no one remembered his name) had sat on the mantle telling a story, but the words of the story hadn't made any sense to Slightly. The other Lost Boys were listening intently, completely enraptured, but Slightly had been bored and turned his ears to the rain. It poured outside and its tapping could be heard through the trees.
From somewhere outside he heard Peter's summoning crow. He'd leapt to his feet immediately, but none of the other boy's moved. They didn't even blink. He tried to rouse Nibs but the boy waved him off without a word.
The crow came again, and this time Slightly shot into his tree and wormed his way up, slipping from the open hole and tumbling out onto the ground. The rain was…warm. It fell through the canopy of trees and he blinked at the hot spatters, looking down at his arms. Fat circles of red decorated his skin and dripped, a new one growing with each drop of rain. The ground was slick. Feeling an unknown tremble rise from his stomach Slightly threw his arms over his head against the rain and called out "Peter!"
The reply was long in coming. "…I'm over here, Slightly!"
Slightly dropped his arms and broke into a frightened run. The dripping trunks of trees flashed by him and the wet leaves slid under his feet. He couldn't see Peter anywhere.
"PETER!"
"I'm right here, Slightly." He said, mouth brushing against Slightly's ear, and the boy stumbled. His face hit the fallen leaves and he sat up to frantically pull the blood clotted things from his body, throwing them down, until Peter caught hold of his wrists and forced him to look up.
Peter wasn't stained. The rest of the island dripped and puddled with red but Peter Pan was spotless, the rain falling around him but never ever touching him. For some reason he couldn't remember, Slightly started to cry. Peter sat down on the ground next to him and looked at him with concern.
"Why are you crying, Slightly?"
Slightly answered him. Peter laughed, and it wasn't a pleasant sound. He reached a stainless hand around and grabbed the back of Slightly's head, dragging him forward despite a panicked protestation. Slightly didn't like being this close to the boys, not if they weren't fighting or roughhousing. It made in his stomach twist up.
Peter ignored his struggle and held him still with more force than his body ought to have, his fingers tangling is Slightly's hair and his lashes sliding down to cast shadows on his cheeks. Slightly braced his arms against Peter's chest in a blatant effort to get away but Peter leaned forward despite it, his breath smelling of fairy liquor against his cheeks. He brushed his mouth softly against Slightly's and the boy's inside knotted up as though in a terror and he let go a whimper, his fists closing on Peter's collar. He felt Peter smirk and open his mouth, bumping his teeth against Slightly's lip, and before the boy's dazed mind could determine his intentions his fingers clutched against the back of Slightly's skull and he bit down, hard.
Slightly had shrieked and tightened, afraid to struggle for the sake of his captive lip, though his hands ripped the seams on Peter's collar. Peter shifted his hands to a painful grip on the young boy's skull and lapped the welling blood against Slightly's clenched teeth.
It was the strange dream of a little boy and Slightly had woken up in the underground house. Nibs and Curly, unable to sleep, had curled together on the furthest corner of the bed and it looked like Curly had been crying.
Caps and Ledger's spots were empty.
Running through the underbrush, Billy Jukes' fingers knotted unrelentingly in his own, Slightly thought of that dream. He'd never remembered it before. Billy's face was touched with sweat as lack of sleep took its toll on his stamina, and the split in his lip was still open and red, barely woven.
"Where are we going?" Slightly asked, apparently startling his friend. Billy almost stumbled but kept pace.
"The mountains. We should be safe there, the bird said no one was looking for us from that direction!"
"Then what?" he asked. "We slightly just can't hide there forever!"
"I can't think that far ahead right now!" Billy's voice had a crack in it and Slightly closed his mouth. A flock of starlings shot out from the trees as they passed and disappeared into the sky.
***
"Captain Popper! Captain Popper!"
A dart of a bird came barreling through the branches with a high, soft toned squeal, dragging a kamikaze course through the trees at an intersecting path with Mullins. The pirate pulled back and pressed himself behind a tree as the dove went zinging past.
"I found the boys, Captain Popper!" It shouted. "Captain Popper, where are you? I found them!"
Keeping his hand at his dagger, Mullins crept through the bushes after the dove, who nearly slammed into the same tree branch twice in its search. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to keep up with any stealth but the bird went hardly any distance at all before letting out a bright "Captain Popper!" and thumping to the ground where that damned merlin was sitting preening its snipped feathers.
"What on earth do you want?" the merlin asked, sounding completely baffled. The blue fairy was dangling off the branches of a nearby bush and casting conflicting colors on them.
The dove puffed up proudly. "I'm helping! I found the boys everyone is looking for!"
"Where?"
The dove pointed in the direction from which it had come. "That way! I told them everyone was looking for them and they went running towards the mountains. But I lied a little." It ducked its head as though it were ashamed at that, but obviously wasn't. "I told them the pirates were in the wrong direction so they'd go the wrong way. They're running towards a pack of wolves!" It said the last very proudly. Mullins felt the intense urge to strangle it.
"Good thinking, that ought to slow them down!" Popper congratulated. The dove looked too pleased with itself.
The fairy snorted. "What an excellent idea. Send a human boy and a ghoul up against some measly wolves. Betcha the boy gets eaten and the ghoul walks away."
THAT got Mullins' attention. A ghoul? He'd known that Billy was in trouble but this was more than he'd bargained for. Not only were Captain Hook and the fairies out looking for the boy, but if he held company with a ghoul that made things all the worse. A ghoul was an awful thing that fed on the flesh of the dead, and when there were no dead to be found were not adverse to making some of their own. He'd been to towns before where the cemeteries were shunned because ghouls pulled the living down into the graves.
He only barely noticed that the birds had ended their conversation. His attention was caught by the fairy's awful giggle after some rude comment or another and he heard the flapping of wings.
"Oh no ye don't!" Mullins shouted and burst from the foliage, taking a wild swing at the startled Captain Popper and managing to knock one wing out of the air, sending him back to the dirt.
"WOULD YOU STOP DOING THAT?!" he bellowed through a beak full of leaves.
Startled, the fairy had a very poor reaction time, allowing Mullins to catch hold of it after only three tries. He held it by its wings like an insect and knocked the recovering Captain Popper back over with his foot so he could grab him by his taloned feet. Mullins turned to look for the dove but it had flown away in the confusion, leaving him alone in the forest with Popper's flustered shouting and the fairy's sniffling curses as its own weight pulled against its wings.
"YOU'RE INTERFERING WITH OFFICIAL BUSINESS!" Captain Popper screeched. "You don't know what you're doing!"
"I know damn good and well what I'm doing." He said. Shifting them both to one hand (something that got some very panicked sounds from a very squashed fairy) he untied his sash and sat down, pinning both bird and fairy with his foot while he laid it flat on the ground. Popper was the one cursing now and the fairy, who seemed to have actually been hurt, was clawing at his boot and shouting in a frantic attempt to relieve the pressure from his abdomen. Captain Popper snapped a brief order to 'buck up and shut up' before doing so himself.
Mullins picked them both up, being careful to keep Popper's beak away from his fingers, set them back to back, and rolled them down up in the sash. With the event of a few avian curses Mullins hadn't heard in a long time he tied the tail tight around them and hung it from the branch of a tree. The strange ornament swung slowly back and forth with the wind, showing nothing but a beak, a trim of tail feathers, and a tiny blue head peeping over the edge.
"There." He said, smiling in a way that couldn't be considered anything but nasty. "That oughta hold ye till I find Billy."
The best parting shot the fairy gave him was a teary sounding "I hate you!" at his back as he walked away.
***
"You okay?" Popper asked after the footsteps had retreated.
Picadilly sniffled. "No, I am not okay! I got kidnapped by a ghoul, my boss will be mad at me by now, and now I'm tied to a flying jackass hanging from a tree!" His breath hitched. "My ribs really hurt right now." He whined pathetically. "I wanna go home….!"
It took Captain Popper several seconds to realize that the mewling, sniffling sound that followed this wasn't just a new extension to the whining and started to struggle against the sash. He did NOT want to be tied to a geeky little fairy with a jackalope obsession who was now, of all things, crying.
"Will you stop your blubbering!?" He shouted when it finally became clear that he wasn't going to wiggle his way out.
The fairy hiccoughed "Get stuffed!"
Poor Captain Popper was, understandably, extremely uncomfortable in this situation. They hung for several moments swinging slowly back and forth to the intolerable soundtrack of Picadilly's sniffles.
"Will you please just bite your tongue or something so I can think of a way out of this?" he growled when the fairy didn't stop.
"Bite me, flea circus!" Picadilly snapped over a sobbing sound.
Popper was ready to launch into a lecture about proper respect and childish behavior when his brain clicked neatly into focus. Bite? Twisting his head, Captain Popper took a mouthful of the dirty fabric in his beak and gnawed at it. The threads were weakened by too many exposures to sea water and they snapped easily.
"I thought of something!" He proclaimed happily, and went to chewing at a second bit.
"Drop dead."
***
There was something very large and very noisy crashing through the forest behind them. Slightly heard it before Billy did and looked over his shoulder warily, searching for the disruption. It was getting louder.
"Someone's coming." Slightly hissed. Billy gave a quick nod and pointed upwards towards the tree branches. Slightly understood; he flew to the lowest branch and helped Billy pull himself up, and as stealthily as they could snuck closer to the top so the foliage hid them. On the highest weight-bearing branch Slightly stopped and pressed his back against the trunk, listening carefully to the noises, and Billy braced his arms on either side to keep himself from falling. The noise came closer and Slightly felt Billy's arms tense beside him.
Something emerged from the cover of the trees and the first thing Billy's mind registered was the color blue. An old blue shirt, to be exact, one he was very much familiar with. His first instinct was to shout out to Mullins that he was here, that they'd been found, but a cold feeling in his stomach kept him from making a sound. Slightly looked at him questioningly and Billy shook his head. They couldn't risk it. Hook might be following Mullins, relying on the man's knowledge of the boy to flush out his prey, or, so much worse to think of, Mullins could be working WITH Hook. Slightly was all too aware that, as Mullins wandered further away from them, Billy was starting to shake.
The brush beside Mullins moved. A glint of teeth flashed in the foliage and before Mullins could turn to face it the greenery erupted, spewing a mess of yellow teeth and glistening eyes, matted fur and jutting bone. The wolf slammed into Mullins and knocked him into the dirt, clambering off before the knife came out and spinning around in its tracks. To the left and the right of him two more beasts leaked from the forest like rainwater.
Slightly didn't even have time to question; Billy pushed away from him and dropped to the forest floor in a clumsy crouch, shooting from the spot as soon as his feet would obey the command.
"Mullins!"
The Brooklyn pirate's head jerked up to see Billy running towards him, momentarily startled, and that distraction was all the wolves needed. Teeth gnashing wetly in the sunlight, the wolves shifted back on their haunches, and jumped.
8
***
Slightly had once had a dream about blood.
He remembered they had all been sitting in the underground house; him, and Curly, and Caps, and Nibs, and Ledger. Peter's fairy (who had been a different fairy back then, but no one remembered his name) had sat on the mantle telling a story, but the words of the story hadn't made any sense to Slightly. The other Lost Boys were listening intently, completely enraptured, but Slightly had been bored and turned his ears to the rain. It poured outside and its tapping could be heard through the trees.
From somewhere outside he heard Peter's summoning crow. He'd leapt to his feet immediately, but none of the other boy's moved. They didn't even blink. He tried to rouse Nibs but the boy waved him off without a word.
The crow came again, and this time Slightly shot into his tree and wormed his way up, slipping from the open hole and tumbling out onto the ground. The rain was…warm. It fell through the canopy of trees and he blinked at the hot spatters, looking down at his arms. Fat circles of red decorated his skin and dripped, a new one growing with each drop of rain. The ground was slick. Feeling an unknown tremble rise from his stomach Slightly threw his arms over his head against the rain and called out "Peter!"
The reply was long in coming. "…I'm over here, Slightly!"
Slightly dropped his arms and broke into a frightened run. The dripping trunks of trees flashed by him and the wet leaves slid under his feet. He couldn't see Peter anywhere.
"PETER!"
"I'm right here, Slightly." He said, mouth brushing against Slightly's ear, and the boy stumbled. His face hit the fallen leaves and he sat up to frantically pull the blood clotted things from his body, throwing them down, until Peter caught hold of his wrists and forced him to look up.
Peter wasn't stained. The rest of the island dripped and puddled with red but Peter Pan was spotless, the rain falling around him but never ever touching him. For some reason he couldn't remember, Slightly started to cry. Peter sat down on the ground next to him and looked at him with concern.
"Why are you crying, Slightly?"
Slightly answered him. Peter laughed, and it wasn't a pleasant sound. He reached a stainless hand around and grabbed the back of Slightly's head, dragging him forward despite a panicked protestation. Slightly didn't like being this close to the boys, not if they weren't fighting or roughhousing. It made in his stomach twist up.
Peter ignored his struggle and held him still with more force than his body ought to have, his fingers tangling is Slightly's hair and his lashes sliding down to cast shadows on his cheeks. Slightly braced his arms against Peter's chest in a blatant effort to get away but Peter leaned forward despite it, his breath smelling of fairy liquor against his cheeks. He brushed his mouth softly against Slightly's and the boy's inside knotted up as though in a terror and he let go a whimper, his fists closing on Peter's collar. He felt Peter smirk and open his mouth, bumping his teeth against Slightly's lip, and before the boy's dazed mind could determine his intentions his fingers clutched against the back of Slightly's skull and he bit down, hard.
Slightly had shrieked and tightened, afraid to struggle for the sake of his captive lip, though his hands ripped the seams on Peter's collar. Peter shifted his hands to a painful grip on the young boy's skull and lapped the welling blood against Slightly's clenched teeth.
It was the strange dream of a little boy and Slightly had woken up in the underground house. Nibs and Curly, unable to sleep, had curled together on the furthest corner of the bed and it looked like Curly had been crying.
Caps and Ledger's spots were empty.
Running through the underbrush, Billy Jukes' fingers knotted unrelentingly in his own, Slightly thought of that dream. He'd never remembered it before. Billy's face was touched with sweat as lack of sleep took its toll on his stamina, and the split in his lip was still open and red, barely woven.
"Where are we going?" Slightly asked, apparently startling his friend. Billy almost stumbled but kept pace.
"The mountains. We should be safe there, the bird said no one was looking for us from that direction!"
"Then what?" he asked. "We slightly just can't hide there forever!"
"I can't think that far ahead right now!" Billy's voice had a crack in it and Slightly closed his mouth. A flock of starlings shot out from the trees as they passed and disappeared into the sky.
***
"Captain Popper! Captain Popper!"
A dart of a bird came barreling through the branches with a high, soft toned squeal, dragging a kamikaze course through the trees at an intersecting path with Mullins. The pirate pulled back and pressed himself behind a tree as the dove went zinging past.
"I found the boys, Captain Popper!" It shouted. "Captain Popper, where are you? I found them!"
Keeping his hand at his dagger, Mullins crept through the bushes after the dove, who nearly slammed into the same tree branch twice in its search. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to keep up with any stealth but the bird went hardly any distance at all before letting out a bright "Captain Popper!" and thumping to the ground where that damned merlin was sitting preening its snipped feathers.
"What on earth do you want?" the merlin asked, sounding completely baffled. The blue fairy was dangling off the branches of a nearby bush and casting conflicting colors on them.
The dove puffed up proudly. "I'm helping! I found the boys everyone is looking for!"
"Where?"
The dove pointed in the direction from which it had come. "That way! I told them everyone was looking for them and they went running towards the mountains. But I lied a little." It ducked its head as though it were ashamed at that, but obviously wasn't. "I told them the pirates were in the wrong direction so they'd go the wrong way. They're running towards a pack of wolves!" It said the last very proudly. Mullins felt the intense urge to strangle it.
"Good thinking, that ought to slow them down!" Popper congratulated. The dove looked too pleased with itself.
The fairy snorted. "What an excellent idea. Send a human boy and a ghoul up against some measly wolves. Betcha the boy gets eaten and the ghoul walks away."
THAT got Mullins' attention. A ghoul? He'd known that Billy was in trouble but this was more than he'd bargained for. Not only were Captain Hook and the fairies out looking for the boy, but if he held company with a ghoul that made things all the worse. A ghoul was an awful thing that fed on the flesh of the dead, and when there were no dead to be found were not adverse to making some of their own. He'd been to towns before where the cemeteries were shunned because ghouls pulled the living down into the graves.
He only barely noticed that the birds had ended their conversation. His attention was caught by the fairy's awful giggle after some rude comment or another and he heard the flapping of wings.
"Oh no ye don't!" Mullins shouted and burst from the foliage, taking a wild swing at the startled Captain Popper and managing to knock one wing out of the air, sending him back to the dirt.
"WOULD YOU STOP DOING THAT?!" he bellowed through a beak full of leaves.
Startled, the fairy had a very poor reaction time, allowing Mullins to catch hold of it after only three tries. He held it by its wings like an insect and knocked the recovering Captain Popper back over with his foot so he could grab him by his taloned feet. Mullins turned to look for the dove but it had flown away in the confusion, leaving him alone in the forest with Popper's flustered shouting and the fairy's sniffling curses as its own weight pulled against its wings.
"YOU'RE INTERFERING WITH OFFICIAL BUSINESS!" Captain Popper screeched. "You don't know what you're doing!"
"I know damn good and well what I'm doing." He said. Shifting them both to one hand (something that got some very panicked sounds from a very squashed fairy) he untied his sash and sat down, pinning both bird and fairy with his foot while he laid it flat on the ground. Popper was the one cursing now and the fairy, who seemed to have actually been hurt, was clawing at his boot and shouting in a frantic attempt to relieve the pressure from his abdomen. Captain Popper snapped a brief order to 'buck up and shut up' before doing so himself.
Mullins picked them both up, being careful to keep Popper's beak away from his fingers, set them back to back, and rolled them down up in the sash. With the event of a few avian curses Mullins hadn't heard in a long time he tied the tail tight around them and hung it from the branch of a tree. The strange ornament swung slowly back and forth with the wind, showing nothing but a beak, a trim of tail feathers, and a tiny blue head peeping over the edge.
"There." He said, smiling in a way that couldn't be considered anything but nasty. "That oughta hold ye till I find Billy."
The best parting shot the fairy gave him was a teary sounding "I hate you!" at his back as he walked away.
***
"You okay?" Popper asked after the footsteps had retreated.
Picadilly sniffled. "No, I am not okay! I got kidnapped by a ghoul, my boss will be mad at me by now, and now I'm tied to a flying jackass hanging from a tree!" His breath hitched. "My ribs really hurt right now." He whined pathetically. "I wanna go home….!"
It took Captain Popper several seconds to realize that the mewling, sniffling sound that followed this wasn't just a new extension to the whining and started to struggle against the sash. He did NOT want to be tied to a geeky little fairy with a jackalope obsession who was now, of all things, crying.
"Will you stop your blubbering!?" He shouted when it finally became clear that he wasn't going to wiggle his way out.
The fairy hiccoughed "Get stuffed!"
Poor Captain Popper was, understandably, extremely uncomfortable in this situation. They hung for several moments swinging slowly back and forth to the intolerable soundtrack of Picadilly's sniffles.
"Will you please just bite your tongue or something so I can think of a way out of this?" he growled when the fairy didn't stop.
"Bite me, flea circus!" Picadilly snapped over a sobbing sound.
Popper was ready to launch into a lecture about proper respect and childish behavior when his brain clicked neatly into focus. Bite? Twisting his head, Captain Popper took a mouthful of the dirty fabric in his beak and gnawed at it. The threads were weakened by too many exposures to sea water and they snapped easily.
"I thought of something!" He proclaimed happily, and went to chewing at a second bit.
"Drop dead."
***
There was something very large and very noisy crashing through the forest behind them. Slightly heard it before Billy did and looked over his shoulder warily, searching for the disruption. It was getting louder.
"Someone's coming." Slightly hissed. Billy gave a quick nod and pointed upwards towards the tree branches. Slightly understood; he flew to the lowest branch and helped Billy pull himself up, and as stealthily as they could snuck closer to the top so the foliage hid them. On the highest weight-bearing branch Slightly stopped and pressed his back against the trunk, listening carefully to the noises, and Billy braced his arms on either side to keep himself from falling. The noise came closer and Slightly felt Billy's arms tense beside him.
Something emerged from the cover of the trees and the first thing Billy's mind registered was the color blue. An old blue shirt, to be exact, one he was very much familiar with. His first instinct was to shout out to Mullins that he was here, that they'd been found, but a cold feeling in his stomach kept him from making a sound. Slightly looked at him questioningly and Billy shook his head. They couldn't risk it. Hook might be following Mullins, relying on the man's knowledge of the boy to flush out his prey, or, so much worse to think of, Mullins could be working WITH Hook. Slightly was all too aware that, as Mullins wandered further away from them, Billy was starting to shake.
The brush beside Mullins moved. A glint of teeth flashed in the foliage and before Mullins could turn to face it the greenery erupted, spewing a mess of yellow teeth and glistening eyes, matted fur and jutting bone. The wolf slammed into Mullins and knocked him into the dirt, clambering off before the knife came out and spinning around in its tracks. To the left and the right of him two more beasts leaked from the forest like rainwater.
Slightly didn't even have time to question; Billy pushed away from him and dropped to the forest floor in a clumsy crouch, shooting from the spot as soon as his feet would obey the command.
"Mullins!"
The Brooklyn pirate's head jerked up to see Billy running towards him, momentarily startled, and that distraction was all the wolves needed. Teeth gnashing wetly in the sunlight, the wolves shifted back on their haunches, and jumped.