Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine.

AN: Well, it's been a while. I'd intended to have this chapter up pretty soon after chapter seventeen, but as you can see that didn't exactly come to pass. For some reason this story was dragging its feet, and anything I started to write turned into complete drivel. I'm sorry! I formally and abjectly apologise for the disgracefully long time this story is taking. I beg you to forgive me. I beg you! But isn't it better to have to wait for a good chapter, than to be able to read several appallingly trashy chapters one after the other?

I grovel, gentle readers. I grovel at your feet.

Chapter Eighteen.

Wendy sparked into life as she hadn't done in three years, and John thought he'd never seen her burn so brightly as she did tonight, here in the glow of the bonfires.

The other boys dropped swords and bows into an untidy pile with a great clatter, and Peter and Wendy did likewise before whirling around into a mad kind of dance. John struggled with the ties of his scabbard. Little gypsy girls with great dark eyes giggled their patchwork way over to the Lost Boys, and to John's surprise Gert was the first to claim a partner for the dance. Finally! The sword fell to the ground with the rest.

John looked up in time to see Charlie tug a young Indian girl by the plaits. She laughed and whispered something John couldn't hear, then they too were away. He was standing alone by the weapons and Wendy's cloak. Oh dear, he thought, pretending to himself that he was wondering what unattached girl he should ask to dance, when really he knew very well that he was scanning the crowd for her.

"John Darling?" a voice came by his ear.

Yes. It was her.

John turned. There she was, all five feet one inch of Princess Tiger Lily, offering him some dark drink from a pottery mug. "Tiger Lily," he breathed longingly, and she laughed.

"Welcome back," she said. He hadn't heard her speak English the last time he'd been here, but she didn't even have a trace of an accent. Not knowing what to do, he took the cup from her, and drank.

"Is it wine?" he asked her, with the syrupy cherry taste in his mouth, but she just smiled and drank the rest. He could see the firelight reflected in her dark eyes. She put the cup aside and slipped a warm hand into his. And then – though they barely moved – it seemed that the circle of dancers around the bonfires expanded and opened, and suddenly he was waltzing a laughing Tiger Lily around and around. The drums beat. The violins soared. Laughter spiralled out and out of Tiger Lily like a silk scarf in the air. Peter and Wendy wove past them, dancing against the current, and John thought that Wendy's feet might not have been on the ground at all.

It felt as though they danced all night. Tiger Lily was finding it harder to breathe and John's blood burned in his veins. Fires and fires under the sky, he thought breathlessly. Tiger Lily dragged him back to the tables of food and drink, and he drained another cup of the cherry-flavoured drink.

A young gypsy couple staggered to a halt beside them, laughing, with Peter and Wendy in their wake. Wendy's eyes shone dark and blue and her hair was a mess.

"Wendy Darling," the gypsy boy exclaimed then. John couldn't decide what his accent was, but didn't care. "Anna, it's Wendy Darling."

"I'm sorry?" Wendy asked, bemused. Peter stole her cup and drank off the rest. The gypsy boy took Wendy's hand and bowed low over it.

"I'm Remy, this is Anna."

"And John Darling," the gypsy girl interrupted excitedly. "And Princess Tiger Lily; it must be. Remy, it's John Darling!"

Though the gypsies had not been in Neverland the last time John and Wendy had, they were remarkably well informed about the events of that time. Their chatter washed over John and, it seemed, Peter, who wasn't even making a pretence of listening. He was tugging Wendy backwards, inch by inch, as she tried to nod and smile at the heavily-accented tirade. Tiger Lily was trying not to laugh. If Peter had succeeded in sneaking Wendy away it might have been turned on them – but at that moment the violins sawed off into silence, and a hush fell. He wished for his sword when he turned, because silence like that never heralded anything good.

John didn't realise he'd been expecting Captain Hook until the tall, pale man in red came into view. At his side was a dark-haired, wolfish man in a three-piece suit and top hat. And behind them . . .

"What are they?" he heard Wendy whisper to Peter, her voice trembling. "My God, their eyes . . ."

Conversation returned, a muted and pale thing, as the two men in the centre greeted the Chief and Queen Margot. There was no mixing as there had been between the gypsies, Indians and Lost Boys, not with these people. If they were people at all, John thought, and looked at Tiger Lily. Her mouth was set. She looked almost afraid.

"I didn't think they'd come," Peter was saying. "It's the Prince and Mr. Cross."

"But what are they?" Wendy asked. Their eyes, she'd said, so John tried to get a look at any of the newcomers' faces.

"Vampires," Anna said softly.

"And werewolves," said Remy, and the two of them melted away, and the Prince and Mr. Cross approached.

And John saw the Prince's eyes.

"John Darling." The Prince was before him now, and John hazily noted his long, pale hair, the red clothes that seemed to have come from another century to the one he and Wendy had so recently left. White skin, a pale mouth. And now that he knew to note it, and couldn't possibly have doubted it, a small pair of delicate fangs.

He couldn't reply. Flat. The Prince's eyes were flat. Pale blue eyes, all the pigment leaked out, all flattened in death. John wanted very much just then to be sick. He'd seen flat eyes like that once before, when a distant cousin had died and the eyes had still been open, and he didn't know now if that had even really happened but what he definitely knew was that he wanted to be sick.

He didn't know he'd been guarding Tiger Lily with his body until she pushed her way to his side.

"And Princess Tiger Lily," the Prince said agreeably. "Always a pleasure." He didn't attempt to take her hand. She stared defiantly back into those flat eyes until he smiled, raised an eyebrow, and turned to Wendy. Peter stood dangerously still.

"Wendy Darling," he said, in low tones. John thought she wasn't even breathing, and this frightened him more than he could have expected. "I have waited so long to meet you."

She couldn't speak any more than John could before. Her hand was in Peter's and John could see that she was holding it so tight his skin had turned white around her clutching fingers. The Prince smiled again, seeming to give up on any semblance of conversation, and made an elegant bow. No one breathed again until they had gone, and their presence was a far and brooding shadow behind the bonfires.

"My God, Peter, their eyes," Wendy whispered, and when Peter pressed another cup of wine on her she drank it down in one draught.

Mr. Cross stared silently at Wendy through the flames. Werewolves, John thought. The Prince made him think of a pale, gleaming snake. He thought about predators, and even the bonfires seemed cold.