Devourer of Men: A Captain Hook, Crocodile, and Wendy Darling Reimagining

We’re tossed into a carriage with bars on the doors and no windows to see out. Our handcuffs are linked through a chain in either wall. The Captain is positioned on the bench across from me, but the carriage is so small and so narrow that he has to close his legs to fit between mine.

The door is unceremoniously slammed shut, the bolt locked into place.

Once the horses are coaxed into action, the wagon lurches forward.

The Captain lowers his voice to a disgruntled whisper and says, “What the bloody hell did you do while I was sleeping?!”

Truth be told, I didn’t do much of anything except escape for some air and a little blood. I paid the dockhand a duket to open his veins for me. It’s more than I give most people. He didn’t fuss about it, even when I drank a little too much.

It was on my way back to the inn that I realized I was being watched, and then followed.

By then it was too late. They clearly knew who I was and where I was staying.

The question is, why does the royal guard care enough to apprehend me?

I dine with royalty. I’m not typically seized by them. I’m too handsome and charming for that.

“I think the question you should be asking instead is, ‘What do we do now?’”

“No!” He lunges forward as if to wring my neck, but the chains catch him and he falls back to the bench. “If I knew what you did, I would know how to assure them I had no part in it.”

“Do you really wish to be free of me so soon?” I’m poking fun at him, but I’m still curious about the answer.

He huffs and falls back against the carriage wall. About every twenty feet or so, the light from the next streetlamp washes across his face through the barred door and I’m given a glance of the sharp lines of anxiety in the space between his brows.

“No need to worry, Captain.” I smile at him. Even in the dark, I know my teeth will show bright. “I’ve been in more precarious situations than this.”

“We’ve been arrested.”

“Yes.”

“By the royal guard.”

“Yes.”

“I think this is one of the most precarious situations two men can find themselves in.”

I smile wider. “Well not thee most.”

We’re in a spot of darkness, traveling in the dead space between two lampposts. He is shrouded in shadow, but I imagine the redness pooling in his face. I imagine him recalling the precarious situation his dick was in just a few hours ago.

“Will you stop?” he says.

“Do I have to?”

He huffs again but says nothing more, and I can’t quite tell if he’s sick of me or desperate for more.

Sometimes they are very close to the same thing.

The carriage makes its way around Avis, then pauses at a guard station at the castle’s curtain wall. There is a conversation between guards, then a lantern raised to our barred door to verify its occupants.

I wave hello.

The Captain raises his hand to shield his eyes from the light. His chain rattles.

“What’s with the hook?” the new guard asks. “You should have seized all weapons.” The light from his lantern glazes his sweaty face.

The other guard, the one who struck the Captain back at the inn and who will pay for it someday soon, says, “Peter Pan stole his hand. The hook is a replacement for it.”

“Ahh yes.” The sweaty man presses his face to the bars to peer in at us. “The infamous Captain Hook, is it?”

“Wait,” I say across the carriage. “You’re Captain Hook?”

He screws up his face at me. “What are you doing?”

“I had no idea!” I slide down the bench and get as close to the doors as I can. “You have to get me out of here. He’s diabolical, I hear. Pursued Peter Pan with violence and tenacity the likes of which we’ve never seen.”

The sweaty guard frowns. “I have heard he’s a ruthless pirate.”

“Yes!” I shout. “He’ll kill me just for sport, I bet.”

“Will you knock it off?” the Captain says through gritted teeth.

“Please, sir. I barely know this man. I thought he was hiring me for some cleaning. I’m poor. Just a beggar, you see.”

“That true?” the glazed pastry asks the other guard.

“Don’t let him fool you,” the soon-to-be-dead man says. “That one right there? That’s the Crocodile. The Devourer of Men.”

The sweaty pastry widens his eyes and lurches back. He drops the lantern and the glass shatters, the flame snuffing out.

The other guards laugh at his expense and he sputters in counter. “I didn’t recognize him! I didn’t know.”

The man who punched the Captain gives the embarrassed guard a pat on the shoulder. “Fair not, Basker. You’re right to be afraid. He’s more dangerous than the pirate.”

“Christ,” the Captain mutters.

“Sorry.” I bump his knee with mine and wink at him. “Looks like I’m more infamous than you.”

“Will this night never end?”

“If you’re lucky, it won’t.”

He rests his head against the carriage wall and closes his eyes. “What was I thinking, teaming up with you?”

The guards disappear from the barred doors and continue their cajoling of Basker before the gate is finally opened and the horses ushered forward.

“Where we taking them?” one of the guards asks.

“Straight to the queen,” the sweaty man answers.

The Captain sits upright.

I tilt my head, ear toward the barred door.

“Never transferred a prisoner straight to the court,” Basker says.

The carriage veers left away from the castle’s main entrance. We’re taken around back to an unmarked door tucked into a thick stone wall.

Just over the curtain wall, the sun is begging to break free of the night.

I should be sleeping but I’m high on blood, cum, and curiosity.

I’m not familiar with the queen of Everland. I had heard their court was influenced by dark witches.

I have faced two such witches in my days. The first one nearly killed me. The second conned me out of my pants, then my shirt, and then convinced me I was a parrot. I spent months craving crackers instead of peanuts.

I don’t much relish the idea of facing another.

The carriage door is unlocked. The dead man appears and gives me a stern warning not to get any ideas about escaping. I nod solemnly. Why would I escape when a mystery is so close at hand?

Plus, it’ll be easier to kill him if I play the part of a dutiful prisoner.

The Captain is unlatched first. He ducks when he’s escorted out and the wagon jostles when he hops down.

I’m next. My heart beats a little harder, seeing the thumping vein in the guard’s neck. I could take him now. But with several other guards standing by, I would have to be quick and there’s no retribution in a swift death.

“When I kill you,” I tell him as my chain hits the carriage floor, “I will make it violent.”

His eyes narrow. “What did you say?”

I used the ancient language. The language of the Bone Society.

The language of monsters.

I wink at him. “It’s an old saying. It translates to, ‘Thank you, kind sir.’”

Close enough.

We are taken through the unmarked door. It opens onto a stone hallway just wide enough for one man, elbows tucked into his sides. Flaming sconces hang from the wall, and shadows dance as we descend further into the palace.

When we emerge, our boots go silent on plush red carpeting.

We’re getting closer now.

The stone wall gives way to more and more windows and the sharp golden rays of new sunlight pour in through the colorful stained glass.

“This way,” the guard says and gestures for us to turn right down an arched hallway.

“If we’re to see the queen,” I ask as I pass, “do we really need the handcuffs?”

“I’d say you need more than handcuffs, but I’m not in charge.”

“I do love a good bondage party.”

He gives me a shove and I rattle forward.

When we enter our final destination, there is a red carpet running from the doorway up to a dais where a dainty throne sits empty.

The queen’s receiving room.

There are no windows here. No second floor gallery. Barely any furniture.

This is not a room where the queen entertains.

As we are pushed down the carpet, I spot a demure silhouette waiting in the shadows of the dais. It’s done up like a stage, with heavy brocade drapes tied off at each side casting deep shadows to the recess.

Once we’ve reached the five stone steps that lead up to the dais, we are yanked to a standstill, then shoved to our knees.

“The night has officially ended, Captain, but I suspect the fun has only begun.”

“Will you shut up?”

“Quiet!” Her voice rings out with authority, but it is not overwhelmed by age. It’s clear and steady.

My eyesight is better than a mortal’s, but I think she’s purposefully obscured herself to make it harder for me to see.

And my second bout of apprehension slithers in.

If she’s purposefully hiding from me, then she knows what I am. Not just my reputation. But that I’m not mortal. Not human.

Something else.

And there are so few people who know the else.

“Captain,” I say.

“Shhh,” he says back.

“Captain, I think⁠—”

“Silence!” she yells and the guard whacks me with his wooden baton.

The force of the hit vibrates through my skull and down my spine.

That guard is double dead now.

The heels of her shoes clack loudly on the stone and then go abruptly silent when she hits the red carpet.

It’s jarring, the loudness, then the silence and I frown against the sensory unease.

That is until she’s free of the shadows. Until my eyes take her in.

The frown turns into gaping. I don’t gape. Not often. Sometimes maybe. Sometimes when I see something pretty I like and want to fuck or bite.

Once upon a time, I wanted all from her. I wanted to fucking drown in her. I wanted her to make me forget.

“When the queen asks for silence, you obey,” she says.

The Captain’s mouth drops open too and he breaks her rule within seconds of her declaring it.

“Wendy Darling,” he says. “You’re alive.”