The Child Thief

“What?” Nick could hardly find the words. “You mean to kidnap more kids.”

She gave him a sharp look. “Talk to them.” Sekeu pointed around the chamber at the kids. “Ask them their story. Peter finds the lost, the left-behind, the abused. Is that not why you are here? Did Peter not save you?”

“Peter tricked me.”

“What would have happened last night had Peter not shown up? Where were you going to go, eat, sleep?” Again she pointed to the other kids. “If what they say is true, then how long before you were selling drugs, or as they would put it, before some pimp made you his boy? Or would you have returned home? Do you wish to go back home now?”

Home, Nick thought. He couldn’t go home. Not ever. But that didn’t mean he wanted to be held captive on some island full of monsters, either. “Just where is here? Just what kind of place is this?”

“Here is the isle of Avalon, the sanctuary of the Sidhe and the realm of the Queen Modron, the Lady of the Lakes. Here is the refuge for the last of earth’s enchanted creatures.” Sekeu’s eyes locked on his, her voice becoming more and more intense. “Here is Devilwood, the domain of Devil Kind, the children of the wolf mask. We are the lost, the wild, the untamable. We are the—”

“Okay, okay,” Nick interrupted, rolling his eyes, realizing he was getting nowhere. “Look, you can’t make me play this stupid game. You got that? I want no part of it.”

She laughed, a cutting, cold sound. “Fool. No one will bother to make you. You still do not understand. This is not a gift. It is something you must earn. Peter has brought you here at great peril to himself. What you do from here is up to you. If you wish to leave, then leave.”

“I’m not a prisoner? I can just walk out of here?”

“If that is what you really wish.”

Nick laughed and shook his head. “Are you kidding me? I’m so out of here.”

She glared at him. “That is the problem with you runaways. You believe you can always run from your troubles.”

“I didn’t run away,” Nick snapped.

Now she was the one shaking her head.

“Well, I did. But it wasn’t like that. Look, you don’t know anything about me.”

But she looked like she did know, like she’d seen it all too many times before. “One cannot be forced to become a Devil, a child of Faerie. It is a hard enough thing if you want it with all your heart. You must take on the challenge of your own free will or the spirit of the forest will never bind with you.”

“Yeah, okay. Whatever. Can you just tell me how I get out of here already?”

She gave him a long, hard look, then pointed toward a large round door at the far end of the chamber.

Nick sat the bowl down and got to his feet. He wiped his hands on his pants, flipped his bangs from his face, and headed for the round door. As he trekked across the hall, one by one, the kids stopped what they were doing and watched him.

A black boy trotted up alongside of him. The kid was a few inches shorter than Nick and missing his left hand just above the wrist. He appeared younger than the others, maybe as young as ten, hard to tell for certain. He had an honest, plain face and kindly eyes, his hair was pulled back into two braids with long blue ribbons woven into their ends. “You leaving already?” he asked in a slight Southern drawl.

Nick kept walking.

“Here.” The boy tried to hand Nick the spear he was carrying. Nick pushed it away.

“Kid, it’d be murder to send you out there without a weapon of some sorts. Now you need to listen up. You come across some of them barghest, you be sure not to show no fear. Got that? They sense you’re afraid then they’ll get after you for sure.”

Nick came to the door and stopped.

“Now, hear me,” the boy continued. “I’m not playing with you. You’re gonna be a-wantin’ this.” He shoved the spear in Nick’s hands.

Nick took the spear and looked at it, positively mortified.

“Oh, yeah. And if the Flesh-eaters track you down, you just drop that there spear and get running. Because,” he laughed, “they’ll just shove the damn thing right up your ass.”

Nick set his hand on the door slat, but didn’t slide it over.

“Here let me help you with that,” somebody said. This voice was deeper than that of the one-handed kid. Nick turned and found himself looking up into the stern eyes of the tall Devil boy.

“My name’s Redbone. Sorry we won’t have the chance to get to know each other better.” He smiled coldly and yanked the bolt over, pulling the thick round door inward. The wooden hinges whined as the door swung open.

Nick immediately noticed the gouged marks on the outside of the door—long, deep slashes running down the splintered wood.

“Don’t mind those,” Redbone said. “The barghest like to sharpen their claws there, that’s all.”

It was gray, musty. Nick could just make out the shapes of a few gnarled stumps and trees, but the rest of the forest fell away into a wall of shifting mist. From somewhere far out, he heard a single howl. Nick recognized that call, would never forget it as long as he lived. It was the same howl that the shadowy hunched creatures, the ones with the orange eyes, had made the night Peter brought him in from the Mist.

Nick found himself incapable of moving.

Redbone put a hand on his back, easing him forward, and started to push the door shut behind him.

“Wait!” Nick cried, slapping a hand on the door. He turned around; they were all staring at him.

“Yes?” Redbone asked, a smirk pushing at the corner of his mouth.

Nick’s lips began to quiver. He started to say something, but was too mad, too afraid he would start crying.

Redbone stared at him. “Maybe you’d like to stay and make some friends? You just might live longer with some friends watching your back.”

Chapter Eight Nathan

The child thief watched the park lamps hum to life one by one. Night had come early beneath the incessant drizzle. The deep shadows from the towering tenement buildings squeezed together and there was no longer a soul in sight. Peter refused to admit that another day was lost, he couldn’t afford another day, not with the Captain on the prowl in Avalon. He pushed through the row of buildings, onto another, then another.

He spotted two figures dodging lamplights and darting from shadow to shadow. Even across the wide courtyard, Peter could tell that these kids were runaways, could almost smell it. A grin snuck across his face—the game was on.

The child thief trailed them into the stairwell of a large building, slipping beneath the stairs. The stairwell smelled of piss and vomit, mold and stale garbage. He leaned back into the shadows, trying not to inhale through his nose as the two boys conversed in low, anxious tones.

Now that they were in the light, Peter could see they had to be brothers, the older one maybe fifteen or sixteen, the younger one no more than twelve. The older boy had a scrape on his forehead, his left eye was swollen, the knees of his jeans torn and bloody. Someone had beaten him.

“What we gonna do?” the younger boy asked.