Yuletide Knights 3

by Johnny Miles

  Griffin had been arguing with the doctor in the hallway when he’d heard the cry. He’d pushed the door open in time to see Jackson about to fall. A split second later Griffin was in the room, with Jackson in his arms. Griffin had caught him, kept him from hitting the floor and banging his head but not before he himself smacked his knee hard. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was bringing Jackson back to life. Griffin had had absolutely no clue what to do for him, how to bring him back.

  It had been Griffin’s mother, leaning over the side of the hospital bed, who had muttered practically the same words as the madman now in Griffin’s face. In fact, he could almost hear her now, whispering in his mind the way she had that night.

  Kiss him!

  “Kiss him!” The madman echoed the sentiment.

  Then, as now, Griffin felt odd about doing what was asked of him but pushed aside his awkwardness. With a deep breath, he brushed his lips against Jackson’s.

  “No, no!” the madman cried. Griffin flinched as the man swatted the back of his head.

  “Hey, now. Stop that!” Griffin hollered.

  The madman seemed to calm down though his eyes were ablaze with passionate belief. “Didn’t anybody ever teach you how to kiss, boy? Don’t you know about true love and the healing power behind it?”

  “Back. The fuck. Off!” Griffin pointed a finger in the man’s face, then waited for the madman to recede back into darkness. Griffin looked down at Jackson’s limp body. Jackson burned with fever.

  Griffin held Jackson in his arms. He thought of how they met and how Jackson had helped with Griffin’s mother, of the way Jackson had stuck around to encourage him in his new role of caregiver. Griffin remembered the late-night phone calls, the silly, sometimes explicit pictures sent back and forth. Mostly, though, he remembered the way Jackson had made him feel: wanted, loved, and connected to something bigger than he’d ever thought possible. Something that had made sense and had made every circuit in Griffin’s mind and body switch on whenever he was with, thought of, or even spoke to Jackson Frost.

  Griffin dug into his heart, into his soul. An energy he’d never felt before rose to the surface. All-consuming, it swelled within him, spread through his veins and into his cells, through his very DNA. It flowed through his extremities as he held Jackson, and Griffin felt Jackson vibrating in his arms.

  His life force…

  Griffin kissed Jackson with all the memory and emotion he could muster, absorbing Jackson’s own heat and expelling it from his body into the atmosphere. He envisioned the poison secreted from Jackson’s body swirling through the corridors of the castle like so many tendrils of smoke. Never mind that Griffin wasn’t supposed to use Magic. He would deal with whatever consequences came his way. Besides, what could using Magic possibly do to Griffin in this realm anyway?

  Griffin parted his lips from Jackson’s and looked up, stunned to see a black mist swirling before him. He gazed into the shimmering iridescence. It seemed strangely alluring, and a part of Griffin wanted to reach out and touch what looked like grainy particles of sand, but instinctively, he knew he mustn’t. The cloud was toxic and needed to go somewhere. He willed it away, and the mist actually moved.

  Griffin knew what he must do.

  Closing his eyes, he allowed himself a moment to connect with the poisonous energy and mentally shoved it away. He saw it in his mind, moving away and out into the tunnel-like corridor. Griffin visualized the mist rising, climbing ever higher, seeping through stone and sand, through the castle walls and doorways, until the venomous cloud reached the Great Hall. There, although Griffin wasn’t sure if what he saw in his mind was real or imagination, Krampus gleefully watched the minotaurs toss Bucket back and forth, even as Krampus’s other subjects, as well as some of his prisoners, lost themselves in revelry, vice, and wanton lust.

  “Back from whence you came!” Griffin commanded the black poison. He didn’t know, nor did he care, whether or not the toxins had actually come from Krampus. What mattered was that his lover heal. Griffin wanted Jackson whole. And whatever happened, whatever Griffin had to contend with, whatever ire Jackson chose to flay him with, Griffin would take it…without tears, without complaints. He’d wear the bruises proudly because Griffin knew he’d fucked up and deserved to pay for letting Jackson go, for losing contact without explanation. And if he had to, Griffin would gladly give his life to save Jackson’s.

  Griffin opened his eyes, looked down at Jackson, and kissed him once again. Jackson’s body twitched and jerked. The fever, though present, seemed to be abating. Griffin pulled back.

  “C’mon, Jax,” Griffin pleaded, his voice low and whispery. “It’s Griffin. I’m here. Come back to me. Please.”

  When nothing happened, Griffin sighed with grave disappointment. A moment later, Jackson took in a deep breath and expelled it forcefully. Filled with relief, Griffin let out a nervous laugh.

  Jackson opened his eyes. He gazed up at Griffin with the look of someone who didn’t know where, let alone who he was. Something like recognition but closely resembling fear fluttered across Jackson’s face, and he struggled to get away. He beat at Griffin, slapping him hard and flailing with desperation.

  Griffin took it. He deserved it. That and more. But he wasn’t about to let go, so he held Jackson tightly. Let him do his worst. Except the tighter he clutched at Jackson, the more he struggled.

  “It’s okay, Jackson. It’s okay.” Griffin shushed him. “It’s just me. Griffin. And no matter what, as long as I live, I’m never gonna let you go. Because now I know you and I are meant to be together. Why else would we meet again? Like this? In such a horrifying place?”

  Jackson stopped fighting. He flinched. Then, with a semi-absent stare, Jackson clutched at Griffin and burst into tears.

  Griffin buried his face in Jackson’s neck and inhaled his scent, held him close—so close he thought he’d surely squeeze Jackson into him—and without thinking, without realizing, the words tumbled from his lips, barely a whisper in Jackson’s ear.

  “I’m sorry, Jackson. Please forgive me. I love you.”

  A moment passed. Then another. Eventually, Griffin loosened his grip and sat up. He gazed at Jackson’s peaceful face, at the whimsical smile that remained on his lips. Then, with tremendous relief, Griffin leaned back against the cell wall and gave a single sob.

  Everything’s gonna be all right, he thought. There was yet hope! Then he remembered. He turned his head and peered into the eyes of madness.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The walls seemed to be closing in on Kris, which of course was ridiculous. This wasn’t a sci-fi action/adventure. He hadn’t blasted a hole in a wall only to fall into a garbage chute. This was a cell—crude and rudimentary to be sure, but a cell nonetheless. Still, the walls did seem to want to entomb him, and he could have sworn the walls had actually moved.

  Focus, damnit! Kris closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. He let it out slowly, reminding himself.

  My name is Kris Kringle. I live in the North Pole. I’m a hundred and seventy-one years old. I’m the twelfth Santa Claus.

  He began pacing.

  I’m here with Bucket, Griffin, and Woden.

  Kris stopped. His fury flourished. “Motherfucker!”

  How dare Woden, that son of a bitch, up and leave? How dare he not be there to watch the poking and prodding as the demons indiscriminately shoved them all back into cells? Fairies, pixies, elves, leprechauns. All manner of Magical creatures long thought to be extinct. To say nothing of the undignified way in which the unicorns were prodded outside! It was beastly. Beastly, ghastly, and…

  Kris struggled to breathe as panic clutched at his throat.

  Stop. I didn’t survive slavery, the Civil War, two world wars, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights movement to let this get to me. I’ve survived abuse, famine, cholera. I lived to see a man on the moon. Hell…I was on the moon! I’ve survived Hitler, the Ku Klux Klan, Republicans, Democrats. This is nothing more than a bump in the
road. That’s all.

  But even as he tried to calm himself, as he told himself he’d gotten out of tighter jams, as he attempted to convince himself that Woden wouldn’t just leave them, that he’d be back with reinforcements, Kris knew restraining his fears would be difficult. Once the tiniest seed of doubt had taken hold, they weren’t easily harnessed. It was a bit like the sliver of oregano that got stuck between his teeth while eating pizza.

  To keep his mind from straying, from giving in to the black maw of despair that threatened to swallow him, he thought to call out to Griffin using Mindspeak. Then Woden’s warning echoed in his brain.

  “No Magic. Any Magic used here gets sucked out of us and remains. We will have even less power than we currently do.”

  But using Mindspeak was an ability, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a power. Not really. Or was it? And even if it was Magic, how much of Kris’s power could he possibly use up? What percentage would it take versus performing some other form of Magic?

  Kris shook his head with frustration. It wasn’t like Woden had left a guidebook. And what did he know, anyway?

  “If anyone would know, it would be Woden. He was, after all, the first Santa Claus,” Kris chastised himself. Instinct pushed him to find another way to remain calm. He had gotten out of tighter jams. He’d do it again, only this time, without Magic.

  Standing at what he gauged to be the center of the cell, Kris stared at the wall to his right. He then stared at the wall to his left. He thought he saw movement and walked up to one of the walls, daring it to move. The wall remained where it was.

  Kris paced, counting his steps.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  He stopped. Turned.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  Kris stopped and did an about-face.

  One. Two. Three.

  He stopped short, swallowed back a fearful gasp.

  No. This can’t… That can’t be right. I…I took bigger steps or…something.

  Kris forced himself to breath normally.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  He closed his eyes and imagined himself back home in his sleigh bed in front of a fire with Bucket by his side, sweaty from love-making, ripe with the stench of spit, lube, and cum.

  Except now he had something else to worry about.

  Without intending to, Kris connected with Bucket and saw what they were doing to him in the Great Hall. The vision made Kris want to kill. He spun on his heels and paced so fast he was practically marching.

  One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four.

  He needed to get out. He had to free himself. But how?

  Kris stopped and looked around. The cell was at least 10x10, and there were dozens of them. Some, like the one across from him, had an invisible barrier that kept the imprisoned inside. Others, like his own, had flat, wrought-iron bars with gaps big enough to slip his arm through yet small enough that his entire body wouldn’t fit.

  But if the walls were indeed moving, if it wasn’t just an overactive imagination or his fear of being enslaved again, then that meant there would be a stress point somewhere. Something had to give.

  Kris stepped up to the gate. He wrapped his hands around the vertical bars. They were definitely iron and cool to the touch. Kris gave the gate a good shake. It rattled on its hinges but did not give. He stepped back and flung himself at the gate. He bounced back like a quarter on a well-made army cot.

  He cocked his head and rubbed his chin, lost in thought. Feeling for something, anything that spoke to him, Kris ran toward the gate, grasping the bars and slipping his feet into the gaps. He swung from the gate like a monkey, to see if any part of the wrought iron would bend or buckle.

  Nothing moved.

  Kris stepped back and rethought the process. He then rushed at the gate once more, intending to hit it with his shoulder, but he rebounded. Kris clutched at his shoulder, wincing at the sudden pain that twanged up and down his arm.

  Done with the gate at least for now, Kris walked up to one of the walls. He placed a hand on the stone. Except it wasn’t stone. Not really. The vibration he felt, the very life force within the substance, was organic, but it most definitely was not stone. It only appeared to have the same hardness.

  Reminds me of the Cliffs of Dover.

  Curious, Kris scratched at the wall with a fingernail. He tasted the debris that crumbled off on the tip of his tongue.

  Salt.

  Which meant the walls were nothing more than stalactites and stalagmites, calcium deposits grown into each other after thousands of millennia to form actual walls that were all of…what? Two? Three feet thick? With enough determination and time, he might be able to, at the very least, make his way into the cell next to him.

  But time wasn’t on his side. And he didn’t want to break out of his cell only to end up in the next one. Kris wanted to break out. To be standing…out there.

  Kris glanced at the gate once more, then down to where the vertical bars ended. There was a four-inch gap between the dirt and the bottom of the prison gate. What would it take to make the gap big enough for him to get through?

  With renewed vigor and mental strength, Kris searched the cell for anything he might use as a tool. Then, because much of the cell was too dark to see, Kris dropped to all fours. Sifting the sand and dirt through his fingers, he made his way from one side of the cell to the other. He used the light from the torch in the corridor to his advantage, slowly making his way farther and farther back to where the light no longer shone.

  Growing frantic, Kris used his fingers like a giant claw, digging through the ground here and there. Suddenly, he whacked his thumb against something hard. He dug at the sand like a dog, pushing back sand mixed with tiny stones and pebbles. After a while, he managed to free the thing from the ground. Scurrying toward the entrance, to where there was light, Kris stared at a femur larger than that of any human’s. With a shudder, he realized he’d come across the remains of a long-dead prisoner.

  Kris gave an absentminded thanks to the disturbed remains and stood. Uncertain where to start, he closed his eyes and let instinct guide him as he shuffled about like a blind man.

  “As I live and breathe,” a disembodied raspy voice like sandpaper whispered.

  Kris stopped, nearly dropping the femur. “Who’s there? I demand you make your presence known!” Kris’s eyes widened as a tiny, emaciated figure stepped out from total darkness and into the shadowy, flickering light.

  “I thought it was you. You don’t know how happy I am to see you, Kris.” The man chuckled with some effort.

  “Huh? How do you know my name? Who are you?” Kris peered at the ancient, wizened-looking man who stood about five feet tall, if that. He was mostly bone, his dirt-encrusted, colorless skin lined with wrinkles. The long, unkempt white hair fell below his waist and matched the equally long beard that nearly dragged on the floor since he was so hunched over. Something that looked like a diaper barely hid his privates and did little to protect him from the elements.

  If Kris didn’t know any better, he’d have sworn he’d been locked up with Gandhi. Then he realized the man wore Benjamin Franklin spectacles with cracked lenses caked with decades if not centuries of filth. Kris gulped as he searched for the telltale tattoo, but he already knew.

  “N-Nicolai?”

  The diminutive man standing before Kris smiled a sad smile and sighed. The man who saved him from slavery, a lifetime of woe and misery, and an early grave. No, from death itself.

  “It’s so good to see you, Kris. It took a while, but I knew you’d come. Then, when I saw you upstairs—”

  “I don’t understand. Why are you here? Didn’t you retire to the South Pole?”

  “No time to explain. We need to get you out of here.”

  “Yes, we do. But—” Kris persisted.

  “We can talk while we work, hmmm? It’s imperative we get you and your friends out of here. The longer you stay in this realm, the closer we get to Christmas. And without you to spread joy and
hope to all those on Earth who so desperately need to believe…something…” Nicolai sighed. “It might already be too late, but we must try. Now come on. Break that bone in two. I’ll help you dig.”

  Nicolai took off his glasses and wiped away tears streaming down his filthy cheeks. He took the other half of the bone Kris broke across his knee, and together, they began to dig.

  Chapter Twenty

  Griffin had always dreamed of this moment. When she was alive, his mother had said repeatedly, “Don’t worry. He’ll come. If not this year, then next.”

  But never in his most frightening nightmare would Griffin have thought he’d meet his father wasting away in prison, let alone an entirely different realm.

  As a boy, it had been fun to believe his mother, to think he was truly the son of Santa Claus. As he grew older, however, and his mother kept insisting, holding on to the thought of his father as Santa Claus had just seemed sad, bordering on pathetic and insane.

  For all the times Griffin had yelled at his mother that no one was coming—that she’d simply slept with a man who fed her a line and took advantage of her little-girl qualities, that she was dumb and naive to believe such bullshit—he now felt small and ashamed. Because here he was, looking into the eyes of Santa Claus. The madness in his eyes seemed to fade, though he still looked homeless, his hair dirty and unkempt, filthy Santa suit hanging from his body like rags. It was like gazing into a grimy mirror, one that reflected the way Griffin might look several decades from now if they didn’t escape from the godforsaken place.

  Griffin swallowed, nervous that he had nothing to say. When the silence had become unbearable, the man finally spoke.

  “Your mother. Virginia? How is she?” His voice was hoarse and raspy.

  Griffin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “She’s…no longer with us.”

  “Oh.” An unmistakable sound of disappointment mixed with sorrow escaped the man Griffin couldn’t yet call father.

  “I-I’m so… I’m so sor—”

  “Don’t be. She’s better off.”