Deliciously Deadly: a Red Riding Hood retelling

Chapter 17

These days, Lottie walked with a skip and a bounce in her steps, especially since the grim spinner Trix shoved a bolt of leftover red linen into her arms, which Lottie promptly used to tailor a new hooded cape for herself.

The tunnels and caverns of the Den might be dark and its residents rough and vulgar in their speech and behaviour, but down here, the world seemed brighter than it'd ever been up there. Up there where the sun shone over the land at the same time as it cast shadows where the dark things hide.

Like the way she'd spent over half her life trying to hide.

"Why do you always cover up your scar?"

Startled by the familiar voice, Lottie looked up from her sewing to meet the twinkling eyes of Demon, who she'd not seen nearly enough in the months past.

In that moment, she forgot about the very scar as she smoothed her hair behind her ears and threw him a wide smile that lit up the cavernous chamber more so than the chandeliers overhead did.

"Demon!" She just about slammed down her needlework and shot out of the wooden bench to throw her arms around the grinning man she regarded as one of her saviours.

"I'm not Demon anymore," he said with a scratch of his head. "I'm now Tiger."

"Oh, please." Lottie tutted with a shake of her head. Now she understood why Dawn had a habit of rolling her eyes at Demon whenever the two of them were together. Even though Lottie was not in the habit of rolling her eyes at anyone, it was difficult to resist doing so when it came to this happy, smiley man who had an unhealthy obsession with trying to be fearsome—the keyword there being 'trying'.

"Hey, look at everyone who's afraid of Wolf. Surely a Tiger is more ferocious than a wolf, no?" He lifted his hands and curled his fingers into claws. "Rawrrrrr."

As difficult as it was to resist rolling her eyes, it was even more impossible not to chuckle at his antics. Sitting back down at the table, she picked up the ripped shirt she'd been mending and poked a needle into the fabric. "Why do you all call him Wolf? He looks nothing like a wolf."

"What? He looks every bit like a wolf!"

"You're blind."

"You're blind." He sidled up to her on the long bench and slung an arm over her shoulder. "Pray tell, little Lottie. What exactly is so interesting about sewing? Everyone here is intrigued because the only ones who do sewing are those who are too old or injured to do anything else. I mean, it's why Trix looks so grumpy all the time, because she doesn't want anything to do with weaving, spinning and sewing."

"How is it not interesting? See here"—she ran a fingertip over a clean tear in the shirt—"this is broken. But me, plain little old me, I have the power to revive this broken garment. All you see is the needle and threading, but I think it's like working magic, giving something damaged a new lease on life. It's fascinating, is it not?"

His brows pinched into a slight frown as he studied the way she deftly poked holes in the fabric, and as she pulled the thread tight, the tear disappeared as if it'd never been there in the first place. "Yeaaaaaaaaah... na."

"Well, what do you do exactly, Demon?"

"Tiger. I'm now Tiger," he corrected, then brought out a glass jar seemingly out of nowhere. A mess of black 'stuff' sat at the bottom of the jar, but after Demon tapped a nail on the glass a few times, the 'stuff' moved.

Lottie reeled back. "What... what is that?"

"It's a battle of venoms. Thirty venomous spiders, centipedes and scorpions placed in a jar to battle and devour each other until the last one remains. That strongest, most vicious victor will also make the most potent poison." As Lottie shuddered from the horror of that imagery, Demon's eyes glinted with excitement. "Survival of the fittest in a jar," he said, shaking the jar a few times.