Chapter 9: Peter (Edward) Part III


2385 A.D.


Peter's senses screamed with the sudden explosion in input. It was all too clear, too loud, too strong, too near. Yet that was nothing compared to the avalanche of thoughts bombarding his mind. His mind roiled like it was filled to the brim with flies, but the hum and buzz and constant noise was not from his own thoughts. He could hear voices and see images not his own…but also hear his own thoughts reflected back to him from a hundred other minds as if he were standing in a hall filled with mirrors.

"Congratulations, you've been promoted," came a voice that he recognized. He would have lunged at the voice in his surprise, but he couldn't. His arms and feet and torso were bound to a table and he could not move farther than an inch in any direction.

Peering down on him from where he stood, John gave him a lackadaisical grin. "I didn't think you'd make it, honestly. I thought you'd die an old man, faithful to the end in your little corner of Neverland, still fantasizing about every time you have read a woman a book. Really, you can do better for yourself. This is your lucky break. Now you can really start living and appreciating the benefits of life in Neverland."

"What did you do to me?" Peter asked. He placed his hands over his ears in hopes of blotting out the many voices ricocheting around in his overfilled mind. It didn't help.

"You are now a Brave, well, for the time being at least. Once you have better control over that," and John motioned to his covered ears, "and your thirst, then you will be elevated to a position as a Lost Boy, like me. You have me to thank for that. You will owe me one, and don't think I'll forget it easily. Now, are you ready for me to release you and have your first drink?"

At the thought of a "drink" and the corresponding memories of tastes cascading through a hundred minds, Peter's entire mind and body felt like it was on fire and he gasped and struggled against his bonds.

"That's what I thought. Hold on. Focus on me, here, and stop listening to all those mindless hooligans hollering out there. They are supposed to be focused on their training and not thinking about their next meal."

The rebuke was both spoken and thought and a wave of irritated clamor settled over the ocean of thoughts.

Focus, Braves, rolled over the many interconnected minds, and Peter could see view after view of different parts of Neverland. Some minds were running military drills within a giant warehouse in Overland. Others were excavating a new tunnel. Others were keeping guard over different points of Neverland. All these minds shared a similar timbre, a rhythm of being. Yet there were other minds, different minds, too. These were farther away and he could not tell how many there were. Some were too hazy and fragmented to make much sense of. Those he could understand were staring at the walls of a small, confined space, eagerly watching a door and waiting for something.

Something. The something he felt gnawing at the edge of every single consciousness he could read. It niggled and chewed at them, trying to claw in and shout for their attention, trying to take ownership of their minds and bodies. He could not understand what it was, but he felt it like a living shadow, always there, always presence, always ravenous.

John unstrapped Peter from the table, made him sit up, and handed him two open green bottles. "Drink up your milk, Newborn."

Peter, of course, recognized these bottles. He had spent year after year sorting them and delivering them. He had cleaned up their contents after the occasional spill and grimaced at the thought of the viscous red liquid within. John thrust the bottles closer to his chest.

"Smell them."

Peter obeyed. He took one in each hand and brought one to his nose. Peter sniffed the opening and his entire throat burst into flames again. He didn't even have the chance to think about his actions. The next thing he knew, both bottles were empty and he was nearly climbing onto John to get more.

It was delicious. Better than any of the stews or porridges Mullins and Chas had ever cooked. The burning in his throat was still present, but at more of a simmer, and not matter how he licked at and clawed at the bottles, they remained empty.

John gave a boisterous laugh and brought a full crate of bottles. He watched in undisguised amusement as Peter drained the entire crate. When Peter finally felt sated, he leaned back against the metal bed and momentarily closed his eyes, still mulling over the taste he had just experienced.

"Welcome to the good life, my friend," John said. "If you think the milk is good, just wait until you get your first taste of our Lady's Medicine."

John momentarily closed his eyes and filled his mind with a memory so bright it cut through the miasma of thoughts like a burst of lightning, fragmenting everything in the background into an opaque haze.

Our Lady's Wine, the Elixir of Life, our Medicine, came John's voice, so familiar and yet foreign as it wove his mental voice straight into Peter's mind, wisping its way like a vapor, whether he welcomed the intrusion or not. John summoned an image of a bottle, black and tall, and wrapped in absolute and unquestioned adulation. A burning thirst, stronger than the one which had previously tainted his throat, now disintegrated every cell in his body from the top of his head to the tip of his toes and bent every inch of his soul to obtaining one object and one alone.

The image, and its potent entrails of memory, reverberated across the web of interconnected minds like an amplifying sound wave, causing a near frenzy to start. Every mind immediately stopped thinking about anything else and every hand stilled. That something Peter had sensed, now burst into the center of every pinprick of thought and coopted every train of thought until It and It alone was preeminent. The taste, the euphoria, their exaltation of their Lady and her Medicine, and, most of all, how they would do absolutely anything and everything to have more, cascaded over Peter until he could not disentangle his own thoughts from those thrust into his head. His mind was taken captive by the flood and he involuntarily lunged as the instinct to obtain that black bottle overcame all of his conscious and unconscious thoughts. A growl burst from his chest when a hand, as strong as the straps which had previously kept him, still stopped him.

"Calm it down. It's not your time yet, Newborn," John said, with a wicked glint in his eye.

It was enough to break the frenzy that had captured him and Peter inhaled and exhaled deeply until he felt like he could control his thoughts and reactions again.

"Impressive recovery," John said. "Usually it takes twice that long for Newborns to come back after their first exposure."

In the past, Peter had seen those black bottles before. They came from a different Storeroom, one he was never given charge of. Drones delivered them to the Braves and the Lost Boys, but never on a schedule and never in as vast of quantities as the milk deliveries followed. Peter gathered the empty black bottles after they were emptied and sent them for cleaning, but he had never known what they were or how they differed from the stores of milk that he was in charge of.

John, sensing his thoughts, licked his lips and decided to answer his unspoken query. "For our kind, all need blood to survive, but we can just as well survive on the blood of animals as the blood of humans. Our Lady developed a means of duplicating all kinds and types of blood. This enables her to support a large population of settled vampires without depleting the animal or human populations above us and without raising suspicions of our activities below ground. In the Storeroom, you dealt with different combinations of blood types from around the world. I believe you just consumed a combination of human types A negative, O positive, with a dash of gazelle and cheetah, for good measure."

"But that's not what is in the black bottles," Peter surmised.

"No. Every now and then, our kind finds a human in possession of the very 'wine of the gods.' It is all pleasure and life and beauty in liquid form and baptizes our entire beings with its revelation."

Peter considered this. "She keeps this special blood separate."

"And rations it pitifully. She only allows the smallest of rations and she has the gall to tell us it's for our 'own good.' The old shrew has no heart and no soul is more like it. There's not a one of us who wouldn't give both his legs for another bottle and there's been more than one of us who's lost his head trying to break into that vault of hers. But she's the only one with access and the only one who knows how to make it so we are stuck waiting for her to flights of generosity to strike."

"It can't be healthy, that fixation on those bottles. Anything that powerful must be dangerous," Peter mused.

"Oh, once you've tasted it for yourself, you'll change your mind," John said.

Oooo


Peter was taken to a vast set of tunnels where barrack after barrack was filled with other Braves. As a human, Peter had never dreamed of just how large or populated Neverland was. His little band of Pirates was not only one of many, but their little set of rooms was also one of many, and each wing and tunnel was kept carefully isolated from the vampire wings.

At first, Peter was surprised to find the room empty of any manner of bed or furnishing. Pegs along walls held their spare uniforms and chests with their names held whatever sparse possessions they chose to claim as their own. Peter's surprise diminished when he realized he never grew tired or felt the need to sit or lie down. His energy never waned and the aches which once crept through his back vanished. His eyes no longer strained to see small letters but could pick out even the smallest text from a distance.

His new "companions" were not worthy of the term. The dozen other Braves who shared a barrack with him were barely able to speak verbally. Instead, they relied entirely on their mental link to communicate and primarily through images and mental pictures instead of words. Each day, their barrack joined a few others and travelled through a series of tunnels and into a large, metal warehouse. It was a vast, open space where they practiced running, jumping, climbing, and fighting. They also practiced controlling their telepathy and working in tandem as a unit.

Slightly and Nibs barked out mental commands and dispensed both rewards and punishments, nearly entirely through their mental link. Mental images of past dismemberments and memories of the taste of rewards were enough to stir both fear and desire and inspire the wild, frenetic army into a semblance of discipline.

When they were not training, they excavated tunnels and shored up the vast underground infrastructure of Neverland.

This alone was enough training for most of the Braves and they were given a few hours each day to lounge in their barracks and do as they pleased. For most, they spent their leisure time entirely consumed with their fixation on their thirst. They neither spoke nor tried to interact with each other. Their minds all hummed into a kind of quiet stasis, each interconnected web of thoughts feeding off of and kindled by the others, contentedly discontented by the ever-present thirst for their future rewards.

A select few of the Braves were given additional hours of training. These were the ones who would be elevated to the prestigious positions of Lost Boys, the ruling generals of Neverland, and Darling's right hands. Peter soon found himself in their number, and his extra hours were filled with lessons in military strategy, additional exercises in control and discipline, leadership development, and introductions to surviving human and vampire societies in Overland.

In the few hours they were left to themselves, these future Lost Boys were just as poor of company as the Braves. Peter felt himself set apart from them for more reasons than he could count. His appearance alone separated him from all the others. The vast throng of men nearly identical to him in facial structure differed by their shorn hair and smooth, youthful faces. In contrast, his long hair still fell to the center of his back and the patch of grey hair in his beard revealed the long years between his initial awakening and the second reawakening. Those long years had been filled with experiences that none of the others had.

The Pirates were kept apart, in their own isolated human communities, quietly supporting the daily existence of Neverland without understanding the part they played in the whole. They were not meant to join in or know about the cutthroat lives of Darling's vast army of over a hundred vampires. He could still hear their thoughts from across Neverland and listen as they mourned his absence and welcomed a new Pirate, Cecco, to replace him. He knew, as they did, that no Pirate was ever truly replaceable. They simply made space for a new one, while miss the hole left by the old. It was both comforting and maddening to be able to hear their thoughts, watch their daily lives, but not be able to communicate or share with them. It eased his isolation while making him all the lonelier.

Peter began wishing he was allowed the freedom to roam the tunnels of Neverland and return to his former companions in the Jolly Roger. He missed their longs and laughter, their stories and their shared lives. The Lost Boys and Braves held each other in very little regard. While they were forced to live and work together, a constant edge of jealousy and competition undergirded all they did, sowing distrust like weeds. They would just as easily cut the legs out of a fellow soldier than see another receive the reward each so desired.

Peter took to filling his own hours of solitude with singing his Pirate songs to himself and reading all the books he was now privy to as part of his training. Those songs were not meant to be sung alone and he felt the absence of the other vocals as keenly as he felt the absence of the other Pirates. None of the others had ever been Pirates.

The Braves were also just as isolated from the presence of their Mistress. Darling's quiet voice directed all the affairs under the ground, but few ever saw her face. She occasionally held briefings with her handful of Lost Boys, but most of these she held through virtual means and she rarely gathered them to see her face-to-face. Peter, also, was excluded from her presence. He could see her through the thoughts of some of the Pirates, those lucky few who were asked to read to her. He could see her through the brief thoughts of the Lost Boys when they received a message from her or crossed paths with her in the halls, but those quiet, stolen hours together were no more. They were as lost to him as his dreams of her face and the way used to be able to pretend his thoughts were his own, sacred only to himself, and lose himself in his inner mental world.

Now, he knew better.

"Why do I never hear her thoughts?" Peter asked John one day. At first, he thought she was away, and then he thought, perhaps, he was so inundated with other thoughts that he could not hear hers.

"Oh, you can't hear her thoughts," John answered. "She has none."

"What do you mean? She has to have thoughts. Everybody does."

"Well, she's the exception. I mean, she has them, of course, but we can't hear them. She guards her mind as closely as she guards her vaults and none of us can enter without her express permission and only as much as she allows."

Peter's hopes fell at this. He had felt a brief burst of anticipation at the thought that he could be vicariously present in the mysterious inner sanctum of his Lady's mind. Of course, she would not allow it. Would she ever allow any to see what dwelt within her innermost box?

"She'll stifle your hearing, too, if she feels like it, or if you are stirring up trouble," John continued. "Then everything will suddenly go quiet and you won't be able to hear anyone's thoughts. It's a strange feeling after being surrounded by so much noise for so long. She's shields Slightly most of the time, but only because he runs a lot of errands for her up there and he isn't exactly discrete about what he does while he's there. She only unshields him during trainings."

"What do you mean?"

John gave a dark laugh. "He has a tendency to spend his free time graphically remembering his, uh, acquaintances with female vampires he's met during his errands. He used to reward us by sharing his memories, but then it gets all the little Braves all over-excited and worked up. Our Lady didn't approve, but since she can't read our thoughts, she couldn't tell when Slightly was stirring up mischief, so she started shielding him."

"He gets to leave?" Peter asked, in wonder at the idea of spending more time in Overland and experiencing all he could only ever read about in book.

"I do, too!" John said, his smile turning more genuine than Peter was used to seeing on John's rather cynical face. "I got promoted to errand boy after the last one got…demoted. Now, I occasionally get out of this hole in the ground and get to see a bit of the world."

John's memories filled with a brief flash of a vampire like him, but with slightly longer hair. The man was climbing the walls of a hall and howling and clawing at the rock like a wild beast. The next flash of imagery showed the man's headless body, piled in an unmoving heap on the floor. Peter got the idea he wasn't supposed to have seen that memory when John quickly covered it up with images of some of what he had experienced in the outside world.

He thought of sights and colors and scents like Peter had only ever heard of in his books and during trainings. It was a world without walls or carved rock ceilings. It was filled to bursting with living things and light and open spaces and beautiful noise. Peter watched it all, utterly entranced at all he could see.

John, noting Peter's rapt attention, gave a dismissive shrug.

It has its advantages. I can see the world. I can meet other people. Here, John's memory filled with very vivid memories of his own encounters with meeting others of their kind, but with a diversity of different shapes and sizes and colors than they ever saw under the ground. I can meet other women. John's internal smugness was palpable as he flipped through his escapades with the few female vampire he had met. It beats being trapped underground here with all you, louts, and the Ice Queen.

"If it is so great up there, why do you come back?" Peter asked. "Why not stay there?" He couldn't imagine why John would willingly stay in a place he so openly despised when he didn't have to.

"Oh, you know, they say that there's no place like home," he answered with a light smirk. His mind belied the sarcasm in his tone by supplying his real motivation. That dark, gnawing chasm within him that longed for more ensured he always, always came back. No matter who he met or what he saw in the Overland, nothing compared to what he would have when he returned home and received his reward. He would prefer to stay underground in Neverland forever than leave and be cut off from his medicine.

The Mistress of Neverland required strict loyalty. She bought it wholesale through the black bottles of blood she was the sole guardian of. In a vault, deep under the floors the Braves and Lost Boys dwelt in, Darling kept another Storeroom. It was identical to the one he had worked in before, but much smaller and attached to a bunkroom where a small group of Pirates he had never met lived and worked. These were not allowed to leave the room and no one but Darling was permitted to enter. The most densely secured and intricate series of doors ensured the room remained closed at all times, except when Darling entered. She fulfilled all "special" deliveries herself and it was one of the rare times when the Braves saw the face of the Lady of Neverland.

Every Brave and Lost Boy nearly frothed at the mouth in excitement when she passed by with her protected cart of black bottles. They knew her footsteps from across the underground city and they paced the halls of their barracks with a frenetic, compulsive energy in anticipation on the day she dispensed her rewards. The growls and howls and cries that rang out upon the deliveries were so animalistic in tenor that the successive clamor could be heard halfway across the underground city.

This draw to the blood in those bottles deeply troubled Peter, almost as much as his growing recognition of the way Darling used that blood to control her army. They were a mercenary army, serving for payment and not because they believed in the cause. Most did not even know what "the cause" was.

"What does she need this army for?" Peter asked John, once.

"Does it matter? She can use us for whatever she wants. She makes us and keeps us alive. What more could we ask for?"

Peter did not think that was an acceptable answer. And he didn't like the tickling of his senses that made him have a foreboding feeling about something being not quite right about it all.

It was not long into his newborn orientation that he began to catch wind of a secondary motivation factor shared by the Braves of the group. Along with the black bottles, there were those whose minds were filled with a fiercely attached yearning for a woman he first thought to be Darling. It was the same face, the same dark hair, but the vision was always seen from a distance and always, always silent. This apparition never spoke or addressed them or even took notice of their existence. She sat quietly or paced through a room or slept on a bed. It was this last image which convinced Peter it couldn't possibly be Darling.

"Who is that woman?" Peter asked John, one day when a Brave was deep in a daydream involving the elusive figure.

"Oh, that's Tiger Lily," he answered.

"Who?"

"You know, Tiger Lily. She's the wellspring of our medicine, the source from which it first came before it could be duplicated. She smells even better than the best of our medicine, all wrapped up in that soft, silky package. Oh, she is divine. She's a bit of a mascot around here, you could say. Our figurehead and the one for whose honor we fight to uphold. It's tradition that each newborn gets to meet her on their first anniversary. It's a kind of rite of passage, of sorts. Once they meet our little lady, then they get their first sip of medicine, though it really is only a sip. Not even a full cup. Then they graduate to the next level of training. You'll see, soon enough it will be your turn."

"But she looks exactly like Darling."

"Of course, she does! She is Darling! In the same way that you and I are the same or that you and the Pirates are the same. We are all copies of someone else, photocopies of individuals long dead and forgotten."

"Wait…who are the originals, then? Who were we copied from?"

"Oh, I have no idea. No one know, except Darling, and her secrets are her own. She has been creating copies of us for as long as I know of, but nobody really knows why."

Oooooo


When it neared Peter's first anniversary, John spoke for weeks about the many pleasures he would soon experience for himself. Peter did not say it out loud, but he knew John could hear his skepticism anyway. He did not think he wanted to try something which had such an permanently anchoring effect on its victims and he did not wish to have so much of his mind given over to the control of something…or someone…else.

It was during this time that Peter caught another glimpse of their Lady, through the minds of the Lost Boys during a meeting. She did not shield the meeting and so he did not feel like he was encroaching when he stopped all he was doing to gaze longingly at her beautiful face through the many eyes watching her and listening to her instructions. She was full of news about upcoming construction projects, preparations for various guests, and the new, updated schedule for patrol and sentry duties. The last item she brought up dealt with Peter directly and caught him quite by surprise.

"It is time to prepare our new Lost Boy for Tiger Lily's camp," she said

"Do you think it's been long enough?" Slightly asked. "It's barely been a year."

"Tootles needs to step down. He is no longer capable of doing his duty," she answered.

Peter could hear the chorus of internal cringes and Curly's observation of Tootles being "too free with his teacups" and going "as mad as a hatter."

"We are going to try a new strategy with our new Camp Lieutenant. He is not allowed to have medicine. He will not taste it. He will not be rewarded with it. He may not even smell it. I don't care how he cries or pleads or whines, don't sneak him any."

All mouths in the room fell open and the minds of the Lost Boys frothed with both sadistic glee, pity, delight, and shock.

"Wait, you want him to spend all day and night in Tiger Lily's camp…without any medicine?" Curly said.

"Yes. He will grow used to it and become desensitized without overindulging and running mad, like the previous Camp Lieutenants did."

"But he'll run mad. That's akin to torture!" cried John. "It's downright cruel! He has to listen to us all get rewarded and he won't get any? He has to get rewarded or what's the point?"

"You all are utterly pathetic," Darling said. "He'll survive and he'll do his job well, or else he won't survive."

Sorry, Petey, he heard John whisper through his mind. You have the worse of all luck, my friend.

Peter couldn't say he was disappointed…or excited. Mostly, he was resigned.

Oooooo


It was both John and Darling who came for him when it was his turn to "go to court." He hadn't physically seen Darling himself since he first woke and his senses were overcome anew with both her scent and her physical charms. For a moment, he forgot everything he had doubted about her in the interim year and it was like that first time, all over again. He stared, dumbstruck, until John began mocking him in his head and stirred him back in the present.

Idiot. Stop gaping like a fish. I will not put up with another four decades of you swooning. Control your thoughts or I will remove them myself with my fingernails in your skull.

When Darling saw him, she carefully assessed him, as she had in the past, but she frowned when she saw his face.

"Why didn't we cut his hair before we changed him?" she asked.

"We were in a hurry and didn't think of it," John answered. "And I don't think Tiger Lily will care."

"Now he is eternally trapped like this. I suppose there is a form of poetic irony to that."

"Because this Peter will be the eldest of the Lost Boys and grown enough to have a beard?" Peter surmised.

Darling nodded once while John rolled his eyes.

They didn't speak during the rest of the walk to meet Tiger Lily. They took him through a tunnel so large and grand it really was more of a causeway than a tunnel. It opened up into a gaping cavernous room. There, a metal chair, bed, and a few piles of boxes lay around the edges while the center of the room was taken up by a giant glass cylinder, as thick as Peter's arms and yawning from floor to ceiling. A nearly invisible control on the wall opened up a small door into the glass enclosure. John gave him a light shove to make him enter and once in, began to secure him in place with chains around his neck and abdomen. Another set of chains were wrapped around his ankles and arms so he was hung from the ceiling so he could not use the floor or the walls to propel him forward and into the glass around him. The thick glass separated him from the rest of the cavern.

"What is this about?" Peter asked. He did not like feeling so constricted and it went against every instinct to allow himself to be caged in this way.

"Necessary precaution to keep you and our Tiger Lily safe," Darling said.

She disappeared behind a ledge of rock and then what Peter had thought was a wall of rock began to peel away with a grinding, grounding crunch. The entire room shook as layer after layer of rock wall sank away into the nearby openings. The third and remaining layer was another thick layer of glass, but this one was interwoven with metal bars.

Beyond, lay a hall larger than Peter had ever seen in the underground caverns of Neverland. It was dimly lit by elaborate golden sconces. The floor was covered with a thick carpet, similar to the one in Darling's favorite room. A platform in the center of the farthest wall showed a brilliantly gleaming chair, golden and inlaid with sparkling designs. A single table stood nearby the chair and held only a pitcher of water and a cup. On the opposite wall, a bed with messed blankets barely covered a quarter of the wall. A doorway on one side of the hall was ajar and he could see the makings of a washroom beyond it.

It was a ginormous room for so little furnishing and it appeared all the more excessively large when he realized it housed only a single occupant.

A small waif of a woman lay on the bed, her chestnut hair as long as her ankles and pouring over the rich bedclothes like a curtain. She wore a dress interwoven with silver that shimmered in the dim lights of the room. From his cage, Peter could see the rise and fall of her chest as she slept and could hear the steady thrum of her heartbeat.

"What is this?"

"Bringing up the rear, the place of greatest danger, comes Tiger Lily, proudly erect, a princess in her own right. She is the most beautiful of dusky Dianas…. coquettish, cold and amorous by turns; there is not a brave who would not have the wayward thing to wife, but she staves off the altar with a hatchet," Darling quoted.

A current of air vented directly over Peter's head and he realized it originated in the nearby hall. He involuntarily inhaled, and then, oh, the scent that engulfed him! It was equal parts ecstasy and torture. It was all the worst loveliness and the best of agonies mired together and going to his head like the wine John always thought of it as.

He stopped breathing so he could think, so he could halt his turbulent emotions and remember both who he was and where he was and why. He closed his eyes and focused inward, dwelling instead on the distant thoughts of his former Pirates and humming a song to himself.

"What are you doing?" came Darling's voice, colder and more aloof than he was used to hearing it during their reading times.

"Humming," he answered and opened his eyes to see Darling standing directly next to his enclosure.

"Humming? You are not hear the hum, you are hear to learn. Pay attention."

"Yes, my Lady," he answered, intentionally neglecting to call her by her name.

"That is Tiger Lily," she continued. "Once each newborn reaches a year in age, you are to bring them to hold court with our Princess. Each spend one hour in this room, but no more and not again, unless they have pleased me in some way and I wish to reward them."

"I don't understand," he said.

One eyebrow rose over her golden eye as she watched his reaction as if she were the mind-reader and not him. "Are you holding your breath?" she asked. At first, he considered lying, but he felt like she could see through him and knew it would a lie so he nodded.

"Stop. Breathe deeply," she said.

"I'd rather not," he said.

"You…do not like it? The scent does not call to you?"

He shook his head, knowing there was no way she would believe him.

"You are lying. Why?" she asked.

It was true. That scent did go to his head and made the room spin and made him wish to throw off all his restraint and follow his basest impulses, but it was not the impulse to consume the woman in that bed. In her eyes, her face, her scent, he saw a perfect copy of his beloved. In Tiger Lily, he saw a living, weakened manifestation of the woman who owned him, heart and soul, and the thought of bringing those feral, wild creatures to gawk at her and lust over her loveliness made him physically ill. She should be protected and guarded and kept as far away from those creatures as possible. He could not harm that delicate creature any more than he could harm his mistress.

But he could not admit that out loud to Darling. He only shook his head in response.

For the designated hour, he dutifully watched the movements of the woman in the great hall. When she woke, she stretched out on her bed and her dark brown eyes blinked away her tiredness. In her heart-shaped face and light nose, he saw Darling, or what Darling once was. She quietly walked back and forth through her chamber, she bathed and changed into an even more opulent dress. Then she fidgeted with the pieces of a chess set until a meal arrived. A portion of stew came by drone but was served on a silver bowl. She ate this on her golden chair while looking at the photographs in a book. Not once did she say a word.

"Can she see me?" Peter asked.

"No. The glass only allows you to see in and not the other way around."

"Does she ever leave?"

"No. This is her home. She is safe in there. She would not be safe if she tried to leave."

"What if they newborns attempt to consume her?" he asked instead.

"None have ever been able to penetrate the barrier around her, though they all have tried," she said, her mouth raised in a half-smile.

"Who takes care of her?" he asked.

"I do," Darling answered. "And now you do, as well. Your new position will be to act as Tiger Lily's most faithful attendant. Our little Princess must be kept safe and free from harm when her subjects come to call upon her and hold court. You are to open and closed these rock walls, chain up visiting newborns, and make sure Tiger Lily is safe and well-tended. You will be in control of all the doors, save one. The final glass layer can be opened by none but me. There is nothing you can do to pry it open. Many have tried, and all have failed. I will warn you, if you do try, it will be your head on a pike next."

He nodded. Peter could not understand what purpose this ritual served.

"Why?" he asked her, once she released him and let him return to the tunnels outside of Tiger Lily's camp. "What purpose does this serve?"

"It keeps my army happy and loyal," she answered. "Each of my soldiers has the same internal longings and I ensure that all their needs are met. They require blood. I give them that in abundance. They long for their own coven and community. They have it with their fellow soldiers.

"They wish for a mate, or at least the idea of a mate, someone to fight for and pine for and adore. Their mating bonds are impressionable and until they have cemented their bonds firmly, they will be wild and rebellious and they have firmly established their mating bond, they will give everything they are for me, for us. Tiger Lily meets that need for them.

"Then, if they are especially good, they are rewarded with the blood of Tiger Lily, which is especially sweet and good for their hearts. It keeps their spirits high and their deepest longings met. What is there that I deprive my children?"

"Freedom," he said.

She scoffed. "Freedom? What would they do with that but destroy themselves and everyone around them? I have seen what happens when these Lost Boys are given freedom and it does no one any good, especially not them. No, they require a mother."

"And you know what is best for them better than they do?"

"Naturally," she answered. "Do you know what would occur if I let them have what they wished with Tiger Lily? She would be dead within a moment and they would spend the rest of their lives wishing she lived. Let them spend all their days wishing for her death and letting the woman live in peace than the other way around."

"How is this kind to the woman herself? She is caged like an animal for your following to gawk at and lust over."

"No, she is free to live a long and unmolested life where she has the best of everything. None can harm her or touch her or hurt her. She is safer there than she could be anywhere in the world and she is both adored and worshiped."

"She may be worshiped, but she is not loved and she is completely and utterly alone."

"Where none may harm her."

"Where none may share life with her or grant her the joy of companionship. Isolation is its own form of punishment."

"Companionship is not necessary," Darling bit back, her golden eyes flashing in anger at Peter. "She doesn't need anyone else."

"I don't agree. Tiger Lily should not be alone any more than you should," he replied.

He knew it was the wrong thing to say when she turned her back on him and vanished into the darkness of the tunnel beyond.


Author's Notes:

Well, Peter is noisy. I had to split this one again.

For those of you that are interested, I envisioned our band of Pirates singing their own underground form of sea shanties (obviously, with less references to the ocean but a similar singing style). Wellerman by Nathan Evans is a gorgeous example.