At the Bottom of This Chapter in the Author's Note

Concerning the Titles
References Made in the Chapter
Concerning the Fanfic's Purpose
Suggested Reading List
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Once Upon a Time
A Modern Faerie Tale

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Chapter One
Little Red and the Big Bad
that is
A Short Tale of a Lost Maiden, a Pack of Wolves, Some Instructions, and a Beast in the Subway

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She didn't want to run, but she didn't know how long it would take for them to overtake her if she did not. And if she were overtaken, they would most likely kill her. If they didn't kill her, she would wish that they had.

She ran, her long, brown hair streaming out behind her in ridiculous ringlets. She had been on her way home from the salon, where she'd gone simply to make herself look nice for no reason. She had spent a day pampering herself because she wanted to. And it had brought the wolves down upon her like a killing plague. So now she ran, the glass and stone on the concrete walkways cutting her bare feet. She didn't bother holding onto her brand new high heels. They were just shoes - she could buy more. She did, however, clutch at her purse, which held her few most treasured items. It slowed her down, but she didn't care.

It would nearly get her and the strange one killed. She would care about that.

She glanced over her shoulder, desperately trying to gauge how far behind her enemies were, when she tripped over a homeless man lying across the pavement. She hit the ground - and the corpse - hard. It ended up saving her life, as a bullet slammed into the grubby tiles on the subway walls. She shrieked and glanced down into the homeless man's face, could tell by his rheumy eyes, gray skin, and too-sweet breath that he was dead from the toxicity of alcohol. Sucking in the air she'd wasted in screaming, she jumped up and kept going, kept running, praying the bastards behind her wouldn't try to shoot at her again. It wasn't as if she could hide anywhere. There was nowhere to go.

Her knee throbbed. She'd whacked it good on the pavement. The flesh of her face burned where the men chasing her had cut her with their knives. Just the thought made her whimper.

She shivered as icy blasts of air gelled her fear-sweat to her body. She'd dropped her heavy, black leather jacket some ways back because it, too, like her heels, had been slowing her down. Now she was cold, and felt sick and chilled. Her throat burned as she heaved in great lungfuls of air. Thank God she wasn't as fat as she'd been in high school, or they'd have caught her by now. Goll-lee. Thank goodness for joining the show choir in the last two years of high school. No way could she outrun psychopathic subway rapists without those years of show dancing.

She didn't look over her shoulder again. She didn't have to. They caught a pretty good fistful of her hair and pulled on it. She jerked out of their hold. They caught it again, gave it a good, hard haul. Against her will, she was yanked off of her feet. She fell to the ground, but the fist in her face, braced by four brass rings, one around each finger, shot her straight up into the air again, and into outer space. Too dazed to scream, she floundered and gasped for air as their steel-toed boots connected with her flesh and passed through to bruise her bones. She mumbled something under her breath, but with all the sneering and jeering from the wolves in human form, they didn't hear it.

It sounded an awful lot like, "Trust the wolves, but do not tell them where you are going."

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Nuada had no intention of interfering. He was quite otherwise engaged.

Even as he subconsciously made that decision, he flicked his hair out of his face with a toss of his head and continued to spin and strike with the silvery twin war axes in his hand. They, like his other weapons, had names - Nuala (of course) and Nemo, the Nameless. Sweat trickled down his back as he moved with savage, primal grace, a pale jungle cat preparing for battle. Sweat gleamed on his forehead, in the lines of his defined muscles, down his scarred chest. The muscles coiled and bunched beneath the flesh of his forearms as he struggled to because as proficient with these rather unwieldy weapons as he was with the knife, sword, and spear.

His friend, the only one who had followed him into exile - a rather large ogre named Mr. Wink - watched as he worked himself to the point of exhaustion. The ogre knew that nothing he could say would force Nuada to take it easy, rest a little. No. Honor, the way of the warrior, chivalry, valor - that was what mattered to the Elf Prince. That, and his vindictive vendetta against the race of Man.

Nuada knew what Mr. Wink was thinking. He allowed his lips to quirk into a brief grin for a moment before returning his focus to the training at hand. Wink knew him quite well, it seemed. Yes, he had a vendetta against the humans. They were hollow, wicked, greedy, vicious.... So no, he would not help the woman.

The Prince of Elfland was cynical, jaded, angry, and brooding. He had one love in his life - one motivating love, at least - and that was for his sister, Nuala. He trained night and day, giving himself only time to eat, sleep, and bathe, in preparation for the war that he knew was going to come one day. He despised humans, hated the entire breed. They were greedy, selfish pigs that deserved to be butchered like the empty, hollow meat they were. One day, as the crown prince, as his father's son, as the Prince of the Elves, he would raise the Golden Army and use them to massacre the humans, all of them. And so he had no intention of helping a foolish mortal woman who ought to have known better than to wander the subway at night alone. She deserved the mugging she would receive.

That was, until he caught the hideous scent.

It was thick, musky, seminal. It disgusted him, choked him. His nostrils stung with it, as did his eyes. It was the stench of perverted arousal, cruelty, and the sickly scent of wolf skins, of predators. He had to swallow quickly as bile rose in his throat.

"Nuada?" His friend, Wink, questioned softly. He'd seen the horrified look on the Elf Prince's face. "What do you sense?"

"A woman... mortal. And wolves." His voice was oddly distant, musing, as if he were commenting on the weather. "They hunted her. They've caught her. They mean to ravish her. Because...." He could taste their thoughts, that pack of wolves. They went after the woman because she wore a red dress and had curly brown hair. That was all. Those were their reasons. They would rape a woman because of....

Before Mr. Wink had finished processing the Prince's words, Nuada was striding from his subterranean home, motioning for Wink to remain. Over his bare shoulder, the Elf called, "Stay here, my friend. I want to make sure that my... home away from home... is well guarded. Don't wait up for me." And he began to run, to race, the wind through the the pillars of the Underground.

If there is one thing I despise more than humans, Nuada thought, it is a coward. And a rapist is the worst sort of coward. No woman, mortal or otherwise, is to be raped when I am there to stop it.

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It was like a hammer. They pounded her body, pounded against her, inside her, until she was drowning in a lake of semen and blood. She could taste both running down her throat, choking her. Her legs had long since been rendered numb by blows. She no longer had the energy to fight. Too many blades of flesh had sliced through her hold on reality. She was floating, or drowning - she couldn't decide which. Strangely, she smelled forests, and tasted the musk of wolf fur on her lips.

Then the hammer blows between her thighs were still, and she was granted blessed respite. She drew a gurgling breath, and barely managed to keep from choking on the blood and spunk in her mouth. She spat it upon the ground and blinked as the darkness above her moved away, allowing the dim, fluorescent light to kiss her eyes. She groaned as the feeling began to return to her legs, then cried out in shock when a foot connected solidly with the side of her face.

"Don't think we're finished, honey," the rough, bestial voice growled. "We just got us an interruption, that's all." And he kicked her again, in the ribs. Something cracked, and she rolled and hunched in on herself.

"Touch her again, and I will teach you the meaning of the word pain."

The voice that spoke was ice cold and clear as fresh spring water in the mountains. It made her teeth ache to hear it - or that might have been the throbbing in her skull from the beating she had so recently received. She blinked past the haze of pain, and beyond the dark mountain of her attacker standing in front of her, out of the eye that wasn't swollen shut, she saw boots. She couldn't focus beyond the boots. Black leather, supple, but scuffed and worn, as if they were old and had seen much use. It was amazing, what things she noticed as her limbs jerked helplessly and her head throbbed, as blood seeped from her body. For a strange, bizarre moment when the entire world became one surreal dream, she thought she saw a cat standing in those boots, a pale cat the color of cream with golden eyes, but then she blinked again, trying to focus on the soft, white fur. It disappeared. Shuddering, she tried to prop herself up on her bloody, skinned elbow, or at least a forearm, but that was rendered nigh impossible by the shooting pain that lanced from her shoulder to her wrist.

"She your woman?"

The voice that demanded this information was gruff, accented with a touch of Brooklyn's tang. It made its victim shiver at the sound of it. She curled up, trying to remain inconspicuous enough that they forgot about her. If they forgot about her, she could run.

Maybe.

"Women are not property. Only a coward treats a woman so cravenly."

She had to look, even though something in her told her, screamed at her, not to do it. The voice was so cold and deadly, it seemed to freeze her marrow, crystallize her blood. She raised a trembling hand to brush her hair from her face and saw a man, his flesh so white it was tinted with blue, his silver-gold hair hanging past his broad shoulders. His eyes were sunken in black pits, and his lips were dark as night. She quaked at the sight of him, though she didn't know why. If the men who had tortured her were a pack of wolves, this man was a beast. He carried in each hand a silver bladed axe on a black handle. The blades gleamed like pain. The beams of fluorescent light hit the cruel edges, giving off intangible sparks of starlight that burned her good eye with their brilliance. Strange, savage death kissed every line of those weapons.

They would do well to run, she thought absently.

"Look, buster - this ain't none of your business. The lady and us, we got ourselves an understanding-"

"Silence, swine! Prepare yourself for death."

Years later, she would try to describe, to her children, to her friends, to the people who would adopt her into their strange family, what had happened that night. Her friends would never understand what she meant, but her children and her family - as yet to be gained - would understand what she meant when she said that one moment, the blond man had been standing there, aloof and isolated from the group of brutal men, and the next, he was crouched over the man who had so recently taken his turn with her, an axe blade buried in the wolf's back. A fine spray of blood had arced across her savior's chest. She tried to gasp, but her throat, squeezed until bruises circled her pale neck, was swollen, and trying to draw such a deep breath made her nearly choke. Despite her pain, her bruises, her blood staining the concrete, something told her that the pack, despite the Beast's presence, was still dangerous. She had to get up.

In the time it took her to make that decision, the blond warrior had struck down four of the nine men who had set upon her. He leapt to decapitate a fifth, when a sixth one, cowering on the ground, suddenly struck out with something that glinted star pain bright in the light of the overhead fluorescents. The steel knife bit into the man's calf, right above the ankle, severing his Achilles tendon. He fell to one knee with a cry that was more rage than pain, and the blade descended again, sinking into the meat of one shoulder. Blond hair flew as his head jerked back and his spine bowed, his body instinctively flinching away from the weapon.

The brunette woman he had fought to rescue glanced around frantically as she scrambled to at least sit on her butt and not be prostrate on her back. She cast around for her purse and found it. In it, she kept rocks, a habit from her middle school days that had never gone away. With hands that shook, she pulled out a good sized stone and hurled it. Her arm screamed at her as she did, protesting the abuse it had suffered, and her aim fell short. She'd been aiming for the man with the knife, trying to hit his temple.

She got him in the back.

The stone projectile had the desired effect, however. The man with the blade whirled to look at her, his face purple with rage, contorting viciously. She tried to move back, but her arms, which she had to use to move herself, to hold herself up, buckled at the elbows, unable to take her weight. She fell onto the ground once more. The man had enough time to take a single menacing step toward her before something silver arced across his throat. He took another step, stumbled, and his head fell from his shoulders. The man whom the blond rescuer had been attempting to butcher when the knife blade had interrupted him lay dead as well.

Six down, three to go. She was feeling good about those odds until she heard the shot. It echoed through her skull. She couldn't hide her wince, couldn't muffle her scream. And the white skinned man stumbled, staggered. His bare torso now sported a hole above his navel, black against the white. Blood streamed from the gunshot wound.

Golden eyes sunk within the darkness met a hazel green gaze shadowed by bruises. Rage, regret, relief - they warred amongst themselves behind his eyes. She felt something akin to a sob hiccup in the back of her throat. Her own regret burned. She swallowed it, swallowed her panic, trying to wet her throat. It was swollen and hot – saliva would wet it enough for her to speak, at least a little. She climbed unsteadily to her feet, her body shuddering. Hot blood and cold sperm streaked down her thighs, staining her knee high stockings. She stumbled towards her rescuer even as she raised her arm to point at one of the men approaching him from behind. The pale warrior turned and the axe blades sank down between neck and shoulders on either side, rending flesh from clavicle to bottom ribs.

Seven dead. Only two left. At least, that's how it seemed. But something warned her. There was danger approaching. They had to get away. Her instincts screamed, and her panic surged. She had to get them both out of there, right now. Something horrible would happen if they remained. Even as she was panicking, she was forming a plan - half a crazed idea, rather, but it was all she could think of.

He glanced at her, and something in his eyes told her to run if she could. But she couldn't. She couldn't leave him. His injuries were horrible. He could very well die here, alone in the subway, because he had tried to protect her from the scum of New York City. The idea made her heart burn like a candle flame. It gave her the power to croak, "Behind you!" He turned, and the spiked haft of the axes both plunged into the rapist's belly. The scum gagged and vomited up gobbets of blood. She shuddered and grabbed her rescuer's arm.

"Begone from this place," he snapped. There was something hateful in his expression, but she didn't care. His trousers were soaked in blood, and he limped badly from the wound at his ankle. His right leg wouldn't support his weight. She saw the leader of the pack, her attackers' alpha male, raise the gun. Her hero turned, raised the axes, and stumbled as he put weight on his bad leg in his haste to attack.

The gun fired twice.

Blood poured from the new hole in his left shoulder. His arm hung like a useless lump of meat at his side. A hole allowed the light of the subway to shine through the meat of one bicep. She had to fight not to be sick. She had to think clearly, had to time this just right. If she got it wrong, they would both die. She needed to hear footsteps. She knew they would come. The footsteps of the approaching enemy, but their assailant didn't know that. She laid a hand on the man who stood beside her. He flinched at the contact and twitched away from her touch, but she knew he would act exactly the way he needed to in order to save them both. When she heard shoes clanging on concrete, on metal stairways, she screamed as loud as her tortured throat would allow, "Officer, Officer! Help us!" She tried to wave, as if she could see someone.

The gunman half turned, and a silver axe flew through the air and embedded itself in the monster's skull. He fell to the ground, and she turned to the man who had thrown the axe with such deadly accuracy.

"We have to get out of here," she hissed. Clutching her purse in one hand, she grabbed his uninjured arm with the other and tried to lead him. He tripped and stumbled. She nearly fell with him. "Ow! Crap! Okay, okay...." She sucked in a breath and tried to think. Her body was numbing itself, compartmentalizing the pain of her injuries, allowing her brain to numb her to what had happened so she could think. It was an old trick from her days as a self-harmer in school. And people say you never learn anything important in high school, she thought giddily. She pulled his arm over her shoulder, trying to support some of his weight. He weighed much less than she'd expected, but he stiffened as soon as she touched him. She pushed herself up, supporting him as well as he staggered to his feet. "Okay... okay, come on. There has to be a safe place here somewhere. Yeah. Come on."

"How are you doing this?" He demanded gruffly. "A moment ago, you could barely move."

"It's a lot easier to push myself past suicidal limits if others are depending on me. And I had time to gather my strength and get a second surge of adrenaline. Self-producing caffeine shots are great. Come on, we need to hide out until they leave. Let's go."

"I don't need your help."

"Um... I don't care. Shut up and walk if you can. Come on, come on...." Her voice was breathy with fatigue, with pain. She didn't sound impatient, only exhausted. "We gotta go. Is there somewhere we can go?" She saw him open his mouth to speak and knew she needed to press her advantage, now, before he got enough energy to really make a good argument. So she hissed, "Look, I'm not gonna leave you here. If you know somewhere we can hide until they forget about us, I suggest you tell me so we can get there before more of them show up. You're in no shape to fight. There's steel and Teflon in those bullets - poisonous to your kind." She was hazarding a guess. If she was wrong, this would all be for nothing. He'd think she was mad as a hatter. But she could tell by the way he flinched away from her that she'd struck a nerve.

"You-"

"I work with children on a daily basis. You pick up a few things. Now seriously - let's go!"

She put the last bit of volume her voice would allow into that last word. He stared at her for what seemed like a thousand years before giving her an almost imperceptible nod. She tightened her grip on his wrist, tensed her shoulders, and began to move. So did he. They were silent, the better to hear their enemies. Footsteps stomped on concrete, and they moved faster. Pain lanced her body, stealing her breath away. She bit her lip to stifle her moans. He, her rescuer, who moved like a jungle cat, was in worse shape than she could have imagined anyone surviving. She owed him. She had to help him.

"You're bleeding," the blond man beside her hissed between clenched teeth. She snorted.

"So are you. Stop talking."

"Why are you doing this?" He demanded. His voice was dripping with venom, with fury. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, but refused to answer. She needed what little breath she had. He pressed, "Answer me."

She shook her head, and kept moving. For a long time, there was no speech between them, save for the tersely muttered directions her rescuer bit out from between clenched teeth. Her vision was beginning to fade, things becoming flickering and white and sparkling. She blinked and bit her tongue to pull herself back from the brink of fainting. She had to do something, or she would fall at his feet. Her fingertips were cold and numb. Her legs were full of red hot spikes. She was gasping, near the end of her strength, but she knew she couldn't afford to collapse. What if her companion needed her help?

"What's your name?" The pale skinned man demanded, though his voice was laced with pain. She glanced at him.

"Why are you talking?"

"Because I no longer hear the sounds of pursuit. So tell me – what is your name?"

She sighed, and tried to keep the world from spinning out of control around her. Taking in a deep breath through her nose and out through her mouth (she'd learned some Lamaze techniques to reduce pain when her best friend had become pregnant their Freshman year of college), she finally admitted, "Dylan."

"Dylan? I thought that was a man's name among... among most people."

The rape victim glanced up at him, shivering and still managing to sport an incredulous expression on her face. Was he seriously asking about whether she had a guy's name while she bled from vaginal tearing and he slowly bled to death from multiple gunshot wounds? Seriously? Or was he trying to make small talk? Because that's actually what it sounded like. But why? Why couldn't he just shut up and concentrate on not dying like a normal person? She shook her head slowly from side to side in exasperation.

"My father wanted boys," she found herself saying.

"I take it he had all daughters," her rescuer replied dryly.

"Until the last batch, yeah. My sisters' names are Michaela and Gabrielle, Victoria and Francesca, Simone and Gardenia. Three sets of twins. I have a twin brother – John. Since you don't like me, why are you asking?" She wasn't cracking jokes. She could tell by the revulsion in his eyes that he positively loathed her.

"The sound of silence irritates me," he replied, his voice wicked ice cold, like starlight. "I would prefer even your irritating voice to the sound of my own thoughts at this moment. You have not the slightest concept of what those men were thinking."

"I'm sure I've some notion," she said with a sharpness she hadn't intended. But the unmitigated gall he must possess to claim-

"Do you know what the barrel of a human's gun would do to a woman's body? Or a glass bottle? A knife blade?" He hissed, his voice seething like hot lava.

She bit her lip and shook her head as tears burned her eyes. She'd read in a book once about a group of men who had raped a woman until they were exhausted, spent, and because their bodies could do no more, they had continued to ravage her body with the hilts of their swords. She had died, slowly, agonizingly. The idea made her blood turn to ice.

"You are luckier than you can possibly imagine, that I decided to save you."

"Regretting the fact that you did?" Dylan asked, only half-joking. He glanced at her, then away, and she knew the answer instantly. She sighed, but didn't comment. If she was right, her rescuer had every reason to gripe about the fact that she'd "imposed" on him, as it were. She felt him stiffen even more. In retaliation, petty though she knew it to be, she tightened her grip on his wrist. She wasn't going to let anything happen to this idiot just because he was trying his hardest to piss her off and make her leave him behind. She had no doubts that that was exactly what he was trying to do. Well, she wouldn't have any of it. He needed help. She wasn't a monster, she wasn't going to just leave him to die.

"Where are we going?" She asked wearily.

"A safe place," he mumbled absently, glancing around. They needed to hurry. He smelled the tang of ozone, which meant a subway train was coming, though not for some miles yet. They had perhaps ten minutes. But he also caught the irritating stench of humans. Male. Aroused, angry, on the prowl. Hunting for something... or someone. Also no more than ten or eleven minutes away, but moving quickly, quicker than Nuada and Dylan could in their current, injured state. Dylan, being human, was slower, weaker. His only chance of escape would be to leave her. He contemplated the idea for a moment.

"How you holding up?" She asked breathlessly, and tripped over her own dragging feet. They both started to go down, but she caught them, steadied them. Her breath hissed through her teeth. "I am... so, so sorry. My fault. Gosh. Move, feet," she snapped down at the ground, as if ordering the appendages around would make them obey her. "Did I jar anything? Any fresh bleeding?"

"No," he replied slowly. "No."

A debt of honor was being incurred here, and it greatly displeased him. He loathed humans, despised them for their spineless, heartless, gutless behavior, yet here was a mortal woman who had remained behind, injured and afraid, to make sure he survived the fight he had engaged in to save her. Even now, when it was obvious to an imbecile that she needed medical attention, she refused to leave him, because he was injured. Either she was stupid, mad, or not altogether human. Those were the only possible explanations.

He heard footsteps, closer this time. Smelled the wolf pack in men's clothing approaching them. Far enough away that they couldn't yet see or be seen, but close enough that they were nearly out of time. Gritting his teeth in anticipation of the pain, he made a decision and with a snake quick strike, lifted Dylan into his arms.

"What are you doing?!" She yelped. "Stop! You're in no condition... what are you doing?"

Her voice had dropped to a whisper as he approached the gap between the concrete walkways and the subway rails. Even as they watched, a rat sizzled and fried as it touched the third rail that coursed with electricity.

"Watch the middle bar," she squeaked.

She squeaked because her body was reminding her in painful ways that it currently didn't like her, but she had no choice but to ignore it. She felt muscles bunch, coil, ripple, and then her rescuer sprung, leaping so that when they landed, it was on the far side of the tracks, well clear of the electrified rail. The impact of their landing sent rockets of pain shooting through Dylan's pelvis, and she bit her lip to stifle a scream.

Nuada didn't ask her if she were all right. He knew she was not, and he did not care to hear her lie to him about her status. He did not ask if she were bleeding still. He could smell the copper fear stench of her blood, feel it dribbling down the arm that was pressed against the backs of her thighs by virtue of holding her the way one might cradle an infant with one arm. His left arm hung useless still at his side, bloody and bleeding.

"Are we almost there?" The human woman whispered.

"Yes," he managed to say calmly. She was watching him with wide, fearful eyes like cobalt pools of ice. It had been... centuries since anyone looked at him like that. The last person had been Nuala....

His chest ached with the struggle to draw breath. His skull throbbed. But he could carry her as far as the entrance. That burst of effort had shaved three minutes at least off their journey. If he continued to be able to maintain this pace, then they would be safe in moments.

He heard a click, and turned slightly to look behind him. Dylan tried to focus on the concrete that rose above and away from them, but everything was blurred. Nuada saw the men, saw their grins, saw the gleam of the light upon the steel barrel of the gun, and spun as the weapon fired. A bullet, burning with pain and iron, ripped into his side. His breath shot out of him, and he hit his knees on the ground. He tasted metal, scented it, and realized a train was coming.

Dylan whispered, "No. No. It isn't fair. Put me down and get out of here. Please, you have to-"

"You killed our friends, eśe," the first thug, the one to the left of the gunman, called out. Dylan fell silent. Tears made her cheeks shine under the dirt. "All for the puta. You're gonna die. No weapons now, man."

Golden eyes met hazel green. Both burned as they urged the other to abandon them and run. Nuada got to his feet. The mortal in his arms cursed under her breath, calling him ten kinds of vainglorious fool. He didn't care. He had engaged in a battle to save her life. Abandoning her now would be dishonorable and cowardly. He had made his decision. Like a true prince, he would abide by it now.

He tried to sprint. He was as slow as a human now. The gun clicked. He picked up speed, or tried. The effort made him stumble. The entrance to his hiding place was less than sixty seconds away.

The gun fired, twice.

A bullet bit his good arm. Dylan landed on the ground in a heap as his muscles lost the ability to hold her. She cried out when the ground hit her. Another bullet found the back of his right thigh. He fell. The moment he was on the ground, she was on her knees. She had a stone in one hand.

Heavenly Father, please, don't let me miss, she prayed silently.

She threw it, hard. It hit the gunman's hand, and he dropped the gun. It went off, and he screamed as blood began gushing from his foot. In his gyrations, he kicked the gun onto the tracks, which rumbled with the weight of the approaching train. Dylan whispered a prayer of gratitude even as she hauled her rescuer to his feet – rather, his one good foot.

"Tell me where," she commanded. "We have to go. Tell me where!"

"Straight," he mumbled. Pain made him dizzy. Blood loss made him cold. He wanted to rest, but... but in rest lay death. "Fifteen feet."

They staggered forward. Dylan looked around wildly. Bright light washed over them, and the subway train honked at them. She gasped and cried, "Now what?"

Nuada touched the wall of concrete and gasped out:

Guardian, Guardian, let me pass
Through stone and metal, crystal and glass
I call for sanctuary from iron and blood.
From pain and death, and the People of Mud.

Guardian, Guardian, hearken to me.
Wake up, rise up, live, be.
Fulfill your oath to lord and land.
Now is the time. Come forth and stand.

Dylan's vision twisted, doubled, and she knew somehow she was going to die. Blood or train, that's what she wondered. Would the train make her into a pancake? Or would she turn into a puddle of blood? That was the question, wasn't it? The crimson liquid dripped upon the cement. The train bore down on them, screaming that they were going to die. She tasted death on her tongue. She blinked at the wall as a gaping darkness yawned before her. Her own eyes or the whispered words of her rescuer?

Her rescuer lurched forward, and she fell... through the wall. The subway train whizzed by them like a herd of carnivorous horses. He sagged against the wall. Safety. Blessed safety at last.

He turned to Dylan, who fell to the floor. She sank into oblivion as the world went black around her. Just before unconsciousness closed up her senses, she smelled the sweet scent of roses, and inexplicably thought, Grandmother?

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Author's Note

Concerning the Titles:

The title "Once Upon a Time" was inspired by a book series I absolutely love by the same name. Written by many different authors, this series consists of retold fairy tales, such as the Storyteller's Daughter by Cameron Dokey (1001 Arabian Nights), the Crimson Thread by I-Forgot-Her-Name (Rumpelstiltskin), and Golden (Rapunzel), also by Cameron Dokey. Because this fanfic will incorporate a gazillion and one fairytale motifs from a vast variety of sources, I couldn't use a fairytale inspired name for the title of the fic (chapter titles being another matter altogether). Hence, the only thing I could think of that fit is Once Upon a Time. So the fic itself is named thusly. If any kind, gentle, loving soul wants to help me the heck out and suggest another title, please do.

As for the chapter titles... each chapter title will be inspired by a fairytale (usually the one whose motif appears in the chapter) and in some instances, like this first chapter, after a retold fairy tale's title. Little Red and the Big Bad is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood with cannibalism and a rather ambiguous ending, found in Swan Sister, an anthology compiled and edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. And each chapter will have a secondary title which gives a more in-depth look to what's to be found in the chapter. Since each chapter, like a story, must have a beginning, middle and end (usually), I also call each chapter a "short tale" that makes up the bigger story.

As for "a modern faerie tale," well... it basically is. It's a fairytale set in our time, so... a modern faerie tale. Although the phraseology, I will admit, was inspired by Holly Black's modern fairy tales (Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie, and Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale).

References Made in the Chapter:

- Trust the wolves, but do not tell them where you are going. This is a line from the short story "Instructions" by Neil Gaiman

- The thing about the stones was something I actually did in middle school. I carried rocks in a fanny pack around my waist in case I ever needed a weapon, because I was afraid of guns and was too young according to my parents to own a knife of any kind.

- Michaela and Gabrielle – Michael and Gabriel are the only archangels mentioned by name in the Bible
- Victoria and Francesca – look at the male versions of those names. Victor and Frank. Victor Frankenstein.
- Simone and Gardenia. Simon and Gar. Simon and Garfunkel. I love their music.

- "The Sound of Silence" is a song by Simon and Garfunkel. My own brother never really liked it.

- The thing about the gun being used to rape a woman was from an episode of CSI: Vegas I saw once.
- The thing about the bottle being used to rape a woman was from an episode of Criminal Minds I saw once.
- The thing about the knife being used to rape a woman was from a Labyrinth/Legend fanfic I read once. I don't think it's on here anymore, and I certainly don't remember who wrote it or even what it's called, but I remember that much.
- The thing about the swords being used to rape a woman that Dylan remembers (that exact story) was from a book I read about Robin Hood called Lady of the Forest. I don't remember who wrote it, but I liked it a lot. Will Scarlet's wife was the victim of rape by Norman soldiers as related in the text of this chapter. It was really sad.

- "Heavenly Father, please don't let me miss" is inspired by the movie IT, based on the novel by Stephen King. In IT, the character Beverly prays, "God, please don't let me miss," right before firing her silver slingshot bullet at the monster. I changed it to "Heavenly Father," because the character Dylan is LDS (Mormon).

- Dylan is named after the singer/songwriter, Bob Dylan. She has a more feminine middle name.

Concerning the Fanfic's Purpose:

This will be a prequel/companion piece to Hellboy II: the Golden Army, with an alternate ending to the movie. I don't like that Nuala and Nuada die. That's just... freaking lame. I mean... ugh. I hated that Nuala killed herself, so that Abe will have to go to therapy. I hated that Nuada died, because surely he was redeemable, a man of his honor and greatness and... I dunno. I was all depressed throughout the movie because the villain was someone who was complaining about all the things I whine about all the time (people not appreciating the magic and wonder in the world, too many parking lots and malls when there ought to be trees and flowers and parks, that kind of thing) and then he freaking up and dies!

Argh! Stupid Hellboy movie script writers! Are you all on acid or something?!?!?!

*insert scream of intense frustration here*

So yeah, that's why the ending in this fic will be different - I hope. If it doesn't fit, then I'm screwed, but I'm gonna do my freaky best. So yeah, prequel/companion/rewrite of the second live-action Hellboy movie to salvage the ending, the villain, and the love interest of a hero. I'm going to try to keep things as close to the movie as possible.

Suggested Reading List:

A list of novels, movies, short stories, poems, songs, etc. that inspired this fic and particularly this chapter (included in every chapter)

- A Company of Wolves by Angela Carter (for fans of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf; I don't know if this is just a movie, or both book and movie)
- Batman Returns (more specifically, Michelle Phfeifer - sp? - as Catwoman)
- Beauty and the Beast (a television show based on the fairytale that aired in the late 80s starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman! as the Beast)
- Blood and Chocolate (the movie of a book. It's only one scene that's relevant to the fic, though. Cookie if you can find it).
- Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel (a beautiful song that helped me through this chapter a lot)
- Dangerous Game (a song from the soundtrack for Jekyll and Hyde the Musical that helped me with the relationship between Nuada and Dylan)
- Dark Celebration by Christine Feehan (#16/17 in a series, just to warn you)
- Instructions by Neil Gaiman (a short story/poem found in A Wolf at the Door)
- Little Red and the Big Bad by Will Shetterly (a short story found in Swan Sister)
- March of Mephisto by Kamelot (yeah, I dunno. It was the melody, not the lyrics, that helped)
- Once Upon a Winter's Night by Dennis McKiernan (for fans of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and redone fairy tales)
- Little Red Riding Hood by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs
- Snow White, Blood Red (first in an anthology series of retold fairy tales compiled by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling)
- The Sound of Silence (an old song by Simon and Garfunkel from the 70s I think)