Son of Krampus (Holidays of Love)

by Ellen Mint

  She was about to say as such, to call him on it, when he leaned closer and sneered. “You’re finished with this. Your place is here and if you want to serve me, then you will not leave the North Pole until Christmas is over.”

  “What? Don’t be absurd. I have to…”

  “You shall do nothing!” he screamed. “Nothing beyond what I tell you to. Now,” gathering his robe tighter to himself, Nicholas resumed his lone march to his office at the top of the tower, “finish the prep work for the next run. I will deal with Mirek and his son, and you will forget you ever knew them.”

  A cold, heartless creature walked away from Nadire, leaving her gasping as if he’d hit her instead of the Krampus. Wrapping an arm over her chest, she bounced on her heels and whispered, “What the fuck just happened?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “AS YOU CAN see, your honor,” Emeric began, shifting the weary eyes of every soul in the courtroom upon himself. Mr. Myra’s team worked their own magic getting the date of the next trial pushed back until the twenty-second. No doubt so they’d be certain his father’s bruises would heal. Emeric intended to raise hell about such a cheat, but once they’d touched down in the states, the bluster in his father had run dry.

  In truth, a fact so deep in his heart he never dare let it taste the light, he was exhausted with this as well. While Mirek had pushed the idea of returning to being the Krampus, at least to a larger audience than the few towns and villages he’d visited, it was Emeric who grew the idea. He was raised on stories of not only the Krampus’ exploits with the fabled Santa Claus himself but how often Nicholas would turn to him. Would ask for Mirek’s advice on matters. Would even stop by for a drink. And in all that time, his father swore that Nicholas had said he could one day return.

  So he started this. He researched the best location to go after the Myras, the best tactics, passed the bar so he could work in the state. And now, with time inching closer, a judge leaning on his side, even legal precedent and the potential of abuse to help them, he was tired.

  His exhausted eyes drifted to the team of Nicholas, Trevor, and Jonah. Fool that he was, for a moment he thought she might be there. He hadn’t heard a word from her since the sixth, though it wasn’t as if the son of the Krampus could be trusted with her phone number, email address, or any means to begin contact.

  “Mr. Hellswarth?” the judge prompted, causing him to shake his head at his thoughts trailing away. “You were saying…?”

  “Yes, sorry, the statute of limitations does not apply as my client has been working in concert with Mr. Myra.”

  “Ha,” Nicholas snorted. “That’s a steaming pile and you know it, Mirek.”

  The gavel banged for the fiftieth time, but it didn’t stop the sneer on Nicholas’ lips. No doubt he thought his having to be here fruitless, though even the man of Christmas looked haggard. His usually rosy-cheeked skin was ash grey, amplifying the few wrinkles that filled his immortal face.

  Crossing his arms and slumping back into the chair, Mr. Myra muttered, “Nothing since the forties, which you damn well know.”

  The judge let that grumble past, but Emeric caught his father sitting up straighter at that. Thankfully, the glimmer was at bay, both men looking more or less like themselves. On occasion, if Emeric turned his head too fast he’d see Mr. Myra swaddled in red or his father with tall ears that twitched to trail every sound.

  “In fact,” Emeric strode forward and tugged out a satellite image of the pair working in concert to stuff dates into a shoe. It was strange to find smiles on the faces of such dour men. “My father worked side by side with you on the sixth.”

  “You scum-sucking, lying, cheat!” Nicholas shouted, slamming both of his hands flat to the desk as he rose. “That’s why you did it? To get proof for your flimsy case! What’d you do to my daughter to trick her into it? Did you threaten her? Answer me!”

  “Sit down, Mr. Myra or so help me,” the judge threatened, but Nicholas wasn’t staring down Mirek. No, all of his ire was on Emeric as he snarled to protect his kin. As if Emeric could ever harm her.

  Shaking his head, he moved to fish out another paper. Just as he reached the table, the courtroom doors burst open and all the breath fled from his lungs. Marching with the same confidence she wore in the base, Nadire glared around the room. While her eyes lingered on her father, for a hint they glanced at Emeric. He should have been prepared, should have expected some new surprise, but every pain he’d felt returning to his cold bed flashed in his eyes. And she saw it all.

  “Your honor,” Nadire began just as the judge sighed.

  “Ms. Myra, what are you doing here?”

  “My father is required to return to his duties. You said that these legal matters would not keep him from the job entrusted to him?” Nadire turned to glare first at his lawyers, then Mirek. His father lifted his shoulders in a shrug as if he didn’t much care, while Weir and Trevor were all atwitter. It was Nicholas who rose to his feet, red finally coloring those ashen cheeks as he worked his way towards his daughter.

  “You were told…” he hissed, hands grabbing at the backs of benches to help himself while Nadire paused.

  “I’d say we have a few days until Christmas, Ms. Myra.” The judge didn’t care. She wasn’t happy with these strange rules the pair kept forcing on her, but they could at least agree—Santa Claus needed to be free for all of Christmas.

  “He is due to the north p…arts of Canada tonight. Aren’t you, father? It is the twenty-second.”

  That nugget of info seemed to chew through the cloud of anger buffeting off of Nicholas. He paused in his stomp towards his daughter and blinked in confusion. “Is it?”

  “How exactly do you intend to get your father to the airport and on a flight in…” The judge turned over her watch to say, “five hours.”

  Nadire snickered as if that was the least of her concerns. She leaned closer to her father, her voice soft, but Emeric caught her whispering, “You’re forgetting your own duties.”

  “I have it all under control.” He waved a hand to try and dismiss her, but Nadire wasn’t easily shaken. “And I told you to stay out! After that mess you caused, you’re lucky I don’t put Tin in charge of operations.”

  So that was it. He was so angry at the turn of events he demoted his daughter or threatened to.

  “I will finish this, prepare as I have before you were ever born, and do my God damn duty!” Nicholas cursed, looking more unhinged with each word. “Get back to the North and leave me be!”

  Spinning on his heel like his word was law, Nicholas began to march to his seat. Nadire seemed frozen, one foot locked in place while the other kept bouncing as if she wished to rush forward and tell him off while also bound to her duty. Everyone in the courtroom felt her pain, embarrassment prickling up his skin while he watched her melt before his eyes. God, he wished he could do something, say something, but he was on the other side. He was the bad guy.

  “Oh for the love of Christ, Nicky,” Mirek thundered, rising to his feet. Emeric tried to get his father to sit down and be quiet, but nothing would stop him now. “Stop acting like such a prig. As if you’ve never skipped a job before.”

  Nicholas’ dangling hands both clenched to fists, “So help me, Mirek…”

  “You know I know. And you can’t keep it forever. Stop…” The taunting voice, the laughter at jabbing deeper and deeper into his enemy’s wounds faded. In its place was a bottomless concern, Mirek trying to reach out for his old friend. “Tell them, tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” Nadire asked, stumbling closer.

  Nicholas’ mouth opened, his eyes wild while darting from his new foe to his daughter. For a brief moment, his face softened as if he was about to break into tears and sob on Mirek’s chest, but the Saint hurled away any compassion. Throwing Mirek’s arm off, Nicholas stumbled back, his voice shrieking, “Not a fucking thing! You don’t know me, you don’t know…!”

  The father of Christmas took a step forward and
his eyes shifted inward, a hand sliding up to his chest. He tried to take in a breath, but it was shallow, air rattling in his nose. “Nick?” Mirek asked in a stricken tone, watching his old friend crumble to a knee.

  Nadire dashed forward, shoving everyone aside as she tried to grab the falling man. “Father?” she cried, catching his hand just as he sank the last inches to the floor. “Dad? Daddy!”

  Fat tears gushed from her eyes and she placed her cheek to his forehead. Her voice scratched like a broken violin while shouting, “He’s not breathing! Why isn’t he breathing?”

  “Call 911,” someone said. Maybe one of Myra’s lawyers, maybe the judge herself. Could have even been his father. Emeric couldn’t tell. He was trying to reach Nadire who burst to pieces before his very eyes.

  “Dad, you can’t…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  FOG SMEARED HER vision, dampened her ears, and throttled her voice. Nadire sat because she feared in her state she’d blunder into a wall and crack her skull. A clipboard lay on her lap, papers she was to fill out nearly tumbling off. His name, his date of birth, his address. All things she’d have to think of a good lie for. But the only number they’d cared about was his credit card while the orderlies yanked his body lying so still upon the gurney. The Myras didn’t exactly have health insurance, they didn’t need it being immortal and all.

  Presumed immortal.

  What was she going to do?

  Collapsing into her hands, Nadire felt the pen she’d been entrusted with clatter against her stomach and drop to the floor. It gave two clicks before falling silent. She should pick it up, fill this out, focus on…on what was asked of her. Always doing what she was told, as if the duty was all that mattered, as if—

  “Ms. Myra?” a male voice prodded into the waiting room a nurse had dragged her to.

  Nadire rocketed to her feet, practically running over the man in scrubs to get to him. She had enough sense to pause before doing such and knotted her fingers so tight the skin pinched. This was it—the bad news, a sprig of hope, or the worst possible outcome the world could imagine. And all she had to keep her company was an old episode of Golden Girls playing on the TV.

  “Yes? That’s me, I mean.”

  “You’re family to…” the doctor inspected his tablet, “Nicholas Myra?”

  “Yes, I’m his daughter. Is he…?”

  Okay?

  Awake?

  Dead?

  “He suffered a serious myocardial infarction. A heart attack. We’ve got him stable for now.”

  Oh god! She told him to get off the damn cigarettes, to stop drizzling honey on every damn thing he owned, to… “Why?” gulped from her lips. She wanted to ask 'why now?' Why to a damn near god? Why would the Father do this right before Christmas?

  “We’re going to run tests, see how bad the blockage is, but I suggest we begin surgery as soon as possible. Any longer of a wait and…” Whatever the doctor was going to say faded as he glanced at the paperwork she hadn’t even started. “Is there anyone else you’d like to call in to help? Your mother? An aunt or uncle?”

  “I don’t…” Mom was busy with her reindeer, Aaron all but abandoned them, there was no other family. There was no one. “No, I’m…I’m fine.”

  The doctor looked about to give his professional opinion that she was not fine, but Nadire glared him down. Instead, he asked, “Do you approve of the tests?”

  “Yes, yes, do whatever you have to.” She nodded her head fast to try and convey just how special of a patient he had in his hands. Just like every other daughter who walked through those doors fearing her father had died at her feet. “May I see him?”

  He glanced back to a door labeled “Authorized Personnel Only” and said, “He’s unresponsive right now.”

  She’d get in the way. The same damn excuses her father kept giving her for why she couldn’t help. Couldn’t assist with his rounds, couldn’t lead teams, couldn’t direct warehouses, couldn’t get this damn lawsuit off of them. “I…I understand.” Her spirit was shattered into pieces, Nadire slumping back in exhaustion.

  “He’s hanging in with all he can right now, and we’re going to do our best for him,” the doctor said before adding, “Your father’s a fighter.” With that he dashed back into the area he came from, Nadire vaguely aware she was in the ICU ward and not much else.

  Wrapping an arm around her body, she sighed, “You have no idea.”

  With no one else to embrace her, to lie and tell her everything would be okay, to hold hands, bow heads, and pray for a miracle, she returned to her chair empty-handed.

  “Merciful God in heaven.”

  Emeric tried to fold his hands in prayer, but his father was once again running. They’d been at it since leaving the courtroom, following the ambulance as if he was a sleazy lawyer. Emeric barely had a chance to pay for the cab before his father took off like a shot. While he’d moved to the information desk to see if there was anything he could learn, his father had bolted to the elevator. He wasn’t even going to hold it for his son, leaving Emeric once again sprinting in a suit.

  “How do you know where we’re going?” Emeric asked for the fifth time, trailing after his father once the doors opened onto a random ward.

  Mirek didn’t seem to be in the mood to answer, his head shifting left and right as if he was listening to a far off song or following a scent trail. Perhaps both. This close to Christmas he was the Krampus in all but fur now. Emeric gave a quick glance down the back of his father making certain none was sprouting over the pants. They did not need to try to explain cloven hooves in a hospital.

  “There.” His father froze, a long finger pointing to a side room tucked away from the hall. A man in blue scrubs stood beside…

  Jesu himself. Nadire looked like she was near death herself. Her eyes were stained red, the mascara splattered to her skin as if she couldn’t stop the tears. A limp hand clung to her elbow like it had to keep her arm attached at the shoulder. And with every word from the doctor she winced, her pain inflicting back on Emeric. He ached to envelop her, to tell her it would be okay, that everything would be fine. To swear no harm would ever come to her again.

  Her broken head bobbed at the doctor and she returned to the lounge area as the doctor ran off. What happened? Was Nicholas dead or…?

  “Heart attack,” his father whispered. “That damned fool. Why did he keep it buried for so long…?”

  “Vati?” There it was again, some secret Mirek refused to share. While Emeric wouldn’t pry into the man’s past, his father always agreed to reveal everything in time. There were no secrets between the Hellswarths except for this, and it was gnawing on him.

  Mirek shook his head as if he couldn’t escape a pain building behind his eyes. He stared up at the lights, his strong face washed clean by its softening effect. “Nick’s heading into surgery for a heart attack, sounds like it at least. I didn’t catch it all.”

  A heart attack? The man was over sixteen hundred years old and he was brought down by that? Could he die? What would happen if he did?

  When a hand landed on Emeric’s shoulder, he swung his head to find his father groaning, “I’m sorry, my boy. I know how hard you worked, but…it’s over.”

  “Dad?”

  “I can’t…I can’t kill my friend just to set things right.” Mirek’s eyes welled in tears bringing the same to Emeric. He’d seen his father cry before, a few here and there that quickly vanished like a summer rain. But this wasn’t like those. This was the week after his mother fell into a coma, Mirek’s face never dry until they put her in the ground.

  His father pawed at his cheeks, trying to smear away the proof he cared. Before wiping the tears off he stared at his fingers. “I’m not a very good Krampus, I suppose. But it’s done. Tell her, that…” Mirek glanced over at Nadire who was slumped in a chair glaring at paperwork in her lap, “that the lawsuit is off. That Nick can keep Christmas, and all the feast days he wants. I never…never wanted to hurt him. Fool
that I am, I thought I was saving him.”

  “Are you sure?” Emeric gasped. His father had been beating a war drum to finally nail Nicholas to the wall, to drag Father Christmas to justice. While Emeric didn’t disagree to step back for this year, abandoning it all after everything they’d been through seemed brash.

  Mirek placed the palm wet with his tears against Emeric’s cheek. He patted it twice more and sighed. “Ja, Son. It was a good effort, but perhaps it was God’s will for me to stay retired after all.”

  A pain landed in Emeric’s gut he couldn’t explain. He should be stewing after all the hours he put in, the money lost, the years of research dedicated to this all gone in a flash. But this was a worse feeling. Instead of anger, all he felt was the frozen grip of despair, of knowing that everything he did, everything Mirek did, only made the world worse.

  “You should go and console her,” his father said, shaking him from glaring at the floor. Emeric glanced up to find the old man pointing at Nadire.

  “Wh…why would she want to talk to me?” Emeric tried to dance quickly around a mine trap, but his father’s perceptive eyes glared at him.

  “Boy, you’re not half as clever as you think you are. I smelled a Myra on you in that airport bar.”

  “You never said, or did anything to…” Emeric gulped, his eyes whipping back and forth from the woman crumbling to pieces and his smug father.

  “What? Stop you? Never wise to come between a Hellswarth piercing the hogshead.”

  For the love of God! Emeric felt himself blushing despite the metaphor being too ancient for even his expanded lifespan. They were in a hospital, surrounded by the ill and dying, and his father was grinning like a… No, he wasn’t. Any other mention of Emeric having a bedmate and his father would chuckle and elbow nudge him, but this time nothing could lift his eyes or raise his lips. He was playing while worrying himself to his own gurney.

  “I’ll go speak to her,” Emeric said, before walking it back to add, “to tell her the lawsuit is off, is all.”