But standing atop the Castle Reef ridgeline and looking down at the Montana Front Range in one direction, and up into the heart of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains in the other, dawn began with a snap as sharp as the cold.
The sun lanced over the flat horizon from impossibly far away and the entire world was catapulted into a limitless blue bowl of sky.
“I take it this is why they call it Big Sky country,” Horatio sounded breathless.
“I guess.” Betsy also couldn’t catch her breath. It might be the eight-thousand-foot elevation or the slicing cold of the morning wind driving ice crystals into her face like blowback from Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle.
It might be the view.
But it was more the realization that this was December 23rd. One way or another, their quest would be over today. As soon as sunset hit the International Date Line in roughly twelve hours, St. Nicholas would be flying off to do his job—with or without the errant Jeremy.
Yet she could feel that he was close. Some instinct, honed over the years by Delta training, told her their quarry was nearly in sight.
She flagged down a rancher passing by in his helicopter, who settled it neatly atop the peak. Clearly ex-military by how he flew, despite the fact that he now commanded a small Bell JetRanger with a herd of horses painted along the side.
“How can I help you, ma’am?” He drawled it out in a Texas accent so fake that it would get him lynched in certain states. “Need a lift off this here hilltop?”
“No, we’re fine.”
“We?” He tugged his mirrored sunglasses down enough to squint at her strangely.
She glanced aside at Horatio who just shook his head.
Fine. Whatever. So he was invisible or something. Had he shown up for anyone else, or had she just crossed Canada as a solo crazy lady talking to herself? She’d bet on the latter, but didn’t have time to deal with it now.
“Have you seen a reindeer that—”
“Reindeer? We have moose and elk in these parts. Even a few caribou, but no reindeer.”
“Reindeer and caribou are the same animal,” Horatio prompted her.
When the pilot didn’t respond, she repeated the information.
“Wa’ll, ain’t that a wonder.”
“Have you seen a particularly impressive one lately?”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He’d have been the handsomest man in any crowd that didn’t include Horatio.
“Might have heard mention of one. Over to a hot spring up along the North Fork Deep Creek. My wife said she saw one when one of our guides and a guest shot—”
“Shot?” Betsy grabbed the pilot’s arm in a panic.
“Shot two young bulls,” the man looked down at his arm in some distress and tried to shake her off. At least the awful Texas accent was gone.
She shook him by his arm to keep him talking.
“She said it was the biggest old bull she’d ever seen. Had himself a couple of does and a fawn. Guess they didn’t want to break up the family. Ease off, lady.” He wiggled his arm a little and grimaced.
“Jeremy has a family?” Horatio’s blue eyes were almost as wide as the Big Sky. Then he looked at her and his gaze shifted as if asking if she also had a family.
She had no one. No one on the outside, and in just another day, she’d be out of Delta and have no one on the inside either. This definitely was not the moment she wanted to be thinking about her future.
“Do you know where that hot spring is?”
Horatio nodded.
“Of course I do,” the pilot looked at her strangely. “I’m the one who just told you about it. Are you okay all alone up here?”
“Not really.” She let go of the pilot who began massaging the arm she’d had a hold of. She was hunting for one of Santa’s reindeer and absolutely falling for a hallucination named Horatio, but she didn’t want to talk about it with some rancher pilot. “But I can find it on my own.”
“I can’t just leave you here, lady.” The pilot looked around. There was nothing to see from the summit of Castle Reef except snowy mountains, dusky plains, and the biggest blue sky ever.
“Fine, I’ll leave you, then. Thanks for the help.”
She walked past Horatio. For the first time, she could feel one of his spatial shifts slowly wrapping around her before it actually happened.
“What the hell?”
She liked that she left the pilot with his own hallucination to figure out. Misery loves company.
Chapter 8
The hot spring was unoccupied, but it didn’t take her long to pick up the fresh tracks through the snow.
“By the tracks, it’s a big bull, two does, and a half-grown fawn.”
Horatio let her lead the way. It was a hard slog through the deep snow, even though the herd had broken the path.
At one point, an avalanche had erased their tracks. It took them several anxious hours to pick them up again on the far side of the damage path.
It was barely an hour to local sunset—and only four or five to Global Flying Time—when she found them. The small herd was grazing near a copse of Douglas fir that had blocked much of the snow. They were kicking aside the little snow that remained and eating the frozen grass.
“Jeremy!” Horatio’s shout of joy shook loose an entire cascade of snow from one of the trees that she barely managed to dodge.
The two of them—elf and reindeer—ran to each other and were soon chattering away in reindeer which sounded like grunts and squeaks to her untrained ear.
Betsy ducked under the low-hanging branches and found a small spot clear of snow where she could lean back against the trunk and wait.
Exhaustion rippled through her as it always did after a hard scouting job. But it wasn’t just that. She was leaving Delta because she could feel that she was losing the edge and, with how far past it Delta normally operated, that was an unacceptable change. One far too prone to death. For the first time since she’d joined the Army, she didn’t belong anywhere. Yet over the last three days…
Betsy watched Horatio as he was introduced to the rest of Jeremy’s family.
For the last three days, Betsy had started to belong. Not merely due to her skills either. When she was with Horatio even something as crazy as searching for Santa’s missing reindeer made sense. Anything…everything somehow made sense when she was with him. She hadn’t truly belonged somewhere that she could ever recall, but she could see herself belonging with a fantasy named Horatio.
She must have dozed, though the sun had barely shifted when Horatio kissed her awake. That gained her undivided attention, but he was too excited for it to last more than a moment.
“He has a family. But he couldn’t get them back to the stables on his own. He needed an elfin herder to transport them the first time. Jeremy is a good man—”
“Reindeer,” she corrected him.
“Reindeer,” Horatio readily agreed and kissed her on the nose. “He didn’t want to abandon his family, but didn’t know any of the locals who could send me a message. Apparently love at first sight happens for reindeer as well.”
As well? Is that what had happened to her? It didn’t seem very likely, but neither did anything in the three days since she’d last stood on Range 37.
Now Horatio was looking at her very intently. “You’re the most amazing human I’ve ever met, Betsy.”
“Human?” But that said nothing of the amazing elf women he’d surely known. Why was she pining for a drug-dream fantasy?
“Woman. Of any breed or species. I’ve been watching you for days and can’t believe your tenacity and skill. Or your beauty. Can all human women kiss the way you do?”
Betsy could feel herself becoming overwhelmed by his compliments. But nothing overwhelmed a Delta soldier. They were trained to keep their thoughts under control in any situation.
She slipped her fingers into his magnificent mane of hair and tugged it lightly to pull him closer.
“Perhaps I won’t give you
any excuse to find out.”
“Mmm,” he made a happy sound as he leaned into her kiss.
She could feel it supercharge her, ramp her up even the way a decisive victory couldn’t achieve. There was a feeling of vitality, of joyous triumph at being alive at the end of a hard battle.
Horatio made her feel that ten times over. His kiss filled her thoughts until they overflowed and radiated back to him. She wanted him to take her right here, right now. Under the trees. In the snow. Even with the reindeer watching. She didn’t care.
She opened her eyes to look up into his amazing eyes the color of the Montana Big Sky, just as a particularly large snowflake plastered itself across her shooting goggles she didn’t recall putting back on.
It left a wet smear when she brushed it aside.
And once again she was in the heart of a mock Afghan village, dusted with North Carolina snow.
A mannequin bearing an RPG leaned out of a doorway.
Only habit had her shooting it twice in the face and once in the chest.
Chapter 9
Betsy finished the Range 37 course with the same high marks she always did, but felt none of the victory at the score—even though she’d managed to snatch-and-grab the bad guy on her own.
The next two days were a slow slog through the bureaucracy of leaving a service she’d given a decade to. Quartermaster this. Housing that. Personnel records the other thing.
She couldn’t equate the Range 37 exercise and the two days of bureaucracy involved in leaving the service with the three days she’d spent with Horatio the Herder tracking a stray Christmas reindeer.
At each step she took through her Fort Bragg reality over the same three days, she could feel the other reality fading into memory. The three days with Horatio had passed so quickly and now time crawled.
December 21st: Quartermaster this. Horatio’s strong hands resting on her shoulders a moment longer than needed as he helped her into a red-and-white parka while they stood in the most magnificent stables she’d ever seen.
December 22nd: Housing that. Holding each other close in a small hayloft in Detah on the frozen shores of the Great Slave Lake. A feeling of belonging she’d never known.
December 23rd: Personnel records the other thing. Waking in his arms in a Glacier Park cabin and knowing she had never been anywhere so safe or so…important before in her life.
December 24th: nothing but a blur. Horatio the elf would be with his reindeer, making sure they performed their annual flight, preparing the stable for their return. Bedding them down when they were done.
No one that she’d served with was currently rotated into Fort Bragg from abroad, so she passed her final days in the US military in silence. Alone.
The snow had melted and new teams were working their way through Range 37. No twelfth-century French village with bad wine and poisonous stew would be awaiting them any more than it was awaiting her. She’d go back if she could, just to see Horatio once more. Once she was out, maybe she’d take her motorcycle to Europe and go searching for a French pub with an Airborne shoulder patch carved into one table’s surface.
But there wouldn’t be. Hallucinations didn’t work that way. It had taken a long and lonely Christmas eve to convince herself that was all it had been.
Early Christmas morning, she turned in her firearm, was issued her DD 214 Honorable Discharge form, and was issued a temporary visitor badge that would see her to the front gates. She bundled up against the chilly day, missing the warmth of the North Pole parka, though she didn’t really feel the cold anymore. Climbing on her Yamaha YZF superbike, Betsy rolled out the Manchester Gate by Pope Airfield.
Maybe she’d swing south and see a bit of the country. She had no real plans until summer. But then her course would be certain. This summer, she’d be chasing the melting snow north, starting with the Flathead Wilderness. Even if it hadn’t been real, she’d retrace the path as far north as she possibly could, right up to Reindeer Station on the banks of the Mackenzie River.
Perhaps there would be a reindeer, a small fawn grown into the grand bull that would at least remind her of Jeremy and she could pretend that he would lead her north to a stable made of yew trees.
At the Fort Bragg gate, the corporal took her temporary pass, and saluted her smartly. She returned the gesture for the last time, then rolled out the gate. Out Manchester Road, she’d pick up North Bragg Boulevard and punch south.
For now.
Then she’d—
Betsy slammed on the brakes and tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
Just off base, along the wooded lane, stood Pyrates Sports Bar. It wasn’t much of a place: pool, beer, and a decent burger.
And leaning against one of the big maples stood an impossibly thin man with black hair down to his waist and eyes the color of the Big Sky.
She couldn’t release her death grip on the handlebars as Horatio strolled up to her and reached out to raise the visor on her helmet.
“Hi.”
“Hi? Hi! That’s what you have to say for yourself? I’ve spent three days convincing myself that you were just a hallucination. What are you doing to me? Is this some kind of weird drug experiment or—”
Horatio leaned in and kissed her.
She dropped the clutch. The Yamaha lurched then stalled, and broke the kiss. She’d already forgotten his taste of cinnamon and the great outdoors. How had she possibly forgotten that?
“Does that feel like a hallucination in your consideration?”
Betsy could only shake her head.
“I know this is a little abrupt, but how would you like a job?”
“No way, Horatio. You evaporated at the end of the last one.”
“I would not this time.”
“And I’m supposed to trust an elf hallucination on that?”
“Absolutely,” and Horatio’s smile lit his eyes to a merry twinkle, just as they did every time.
“Why?”
“Because I could use the assistance of a skilled reindeer herder.”
“You want me to live at the North Pole with you?”
“We would travel a lot. I only tend the reindeer around Christmas. An elf’s main job during the year is rather global: spreading good cheer wherever he can.”
“Can you promise me that you’re not a hallucination? I really want you to not be a hallucination.” Even if he was, Betsy had the feeling that she wasn’t going to care.
“I’ve been wracking my brain to find an appropriate Christmas present for you. That wish will do nicely. I promise you that I am completely real.”
She hadn’t thought about a Christmas wish in a long time, but if there was ever one she wanted to come true…
Betsy kissed him lightly, then nodded toward the back of the bike.
“Climb aboard, Horatio. We’ve got some good cheer to spread.”
Chapter 10
Betsy leaned against the yew tree that made one side of the stable’s main door and pulled her red-and-white parka more tightly about her as she watched Horatio with the herd. It was Christmas Eve and once more the excitement practically shimmered through St. Nick’s stables.
Harnesses with bright polished bells were laid upon well-curry-combed backs as the reindeer pranced with delight. A small elf choir stood up in the hayloft singing about Good King Wenceslas, Little Drummer Boys, and Friendly Beasts. She noted that Rudolph was nowhere in the repertoire—Jeremy was not a fan of Robert L. May. He’d grown to be a very dignified reindeer.
“Especially now that he has a family to look after,” Horatio had whispered softly in her ear one night.
And his nose was definitely not red, his main point of contention.
Before Jeremy was harnessed into the lead position, he clopped over to her and faced her silently.
Betsy’s grasp of reindeer language still sucked, though she was improving.
But he didn’t say a word.
Instead, he tipped his head down, and shifted his face gently again
st her chest and simply rested it there. His great rack of antlers framed her protectively to either side.
She hugged him, wrapping her arms around his head.
“Merry Christmas to all,” she whispered to him. “And have a good flight.”
He snorted a soft laugh at her twisting of the last line of Rudolph’s story before pulling away to stride over to his position to be harnessed in.
With a stamp and snort and a prance and a paw, the herd was soon aloft, towing St. Nick and his sleigh on their merry rounds.
The silence seemed to be a long time settling over the stables once they were gone. But in time, even the fireflies had settled and only the quiet stars of the Arctic night lit the stables.
Jeremy slipped close beside her and wrapped his arms about her. She rested back against him and marveled at how her life had changed. How she would never be alone again.
Last Christmas, Horatio had given her a gift beyond imagining, she was no longer alone in the world.
She rested her hand on her own belly.
Tomorrow, Christmas morning—after the reindeer had completed their flight, then gone to bed for the night—she would tell him the news.
Her gift to him would be—she tried not to think it in the same rhythm as the Rudolph poem, but being married to a Christmas elf was changing her in many wondrous ways—that quite soon they’d be three.
Daniel’s Christmas (excerpt)
If you liked this, you’ll love Daniel and Alice
Excerpt
Daniel Drake Darlington III pushed back further into the armchair and hung on for dear life. Without warning the seat did its best to eject him forcibly onto the floor. Only the heavy seatbelt, that was threatening to cut him in half he’d pulled it so tight, kept him in place.
Delta Mission: Operation Rudolph Page 3
