“Two hours!” Joey yelled just as she winked out of sight.
Ronnie came up next to me, catching herself on my shoulder. She squinted into the night, trying to see the portal.
“Can you see it?” I asked.
“No, but I can still feel it,” she said, holding out a hand. Her fingertips disappeared. “It’s still there.” She took her hand back, her fingertips reappearing, and squeezed my shoulder.
“Now or never.” I turned around and faced the mountain ahead of us.
***
I didn’t know how long it took us to reach the opening of the cavern, but all the while, I heard the ticking of the clock pounding away in my head. I prayed we had enough time before Joey threw that ornament and brought us home. I wanted to trust her, but I was afraid her nerves would get the better of her and she might break the charm earlier than we’d agreed upon. I just had to hope she didn’t.
The random gusts of heat came from the gaping maw of the cavern. Ronnie and I stood to the side of the opening, crouching close to the rock and trying to peer inside. It was too dark to see down the long tunnel that curved away from the opening. Ronnie glanced over her shoulder at me and motioned with her head for me to follow her. She stood and took the first tentative step inside.
As we crept down the tunnel, I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Smoke and sulfur filled my senses and made my head spin. As we came closer to the end of the tunnel, light glowing at the end and drawing us deeper, I knew exactly what we would see around that corner. I grabbed Ronnie’s shoulder to stop her. Silence pressed painfully at my ears.
“What?” Ronnie mouthed.
I wished we had telepathic abilities so we didn’t have to speak and give ourselves away. I put my face close to her ear and whispered, “I think I’ve been here in a dream.”
Ronnie jerked back, and her whole face was pinched. “Please do not go all Wizard of Oz on me right now.”
I put my finger to my lips to quiet her, cringing at the level of her voice. “Shut up. I just mean, I think I know what’s around that corner. We have to slow down.”
“Fine,” she whispered and motioned with her hands. “You lead then.”
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat, and stepped forward. Placing my back against the rough rock wall, I slid along with Ronnie’s hand on my shoulder. I heard a quiet snick as she undid the snap on her holster and the slide of the gun as she pulled it free. It was both comforting and not—it was a long-range weapon, but it was a human weapon that I didn’t totally understand or trust. But I trusted Ronnie.
We were near the edge of the tunnel, the light was bright enough for us to see clearly. But that isn’t what had my attention—it was the music. I heard the sad, pitiful sound of a record player playing some old-fashioned, twangy carol. The lights flickered and blinked, and as the player skipped on the scratched record, I heard a soft sob that I was sure I’d heard before. Ronnie squeezed my shoulder and I stepped to the edge of the tunnel, craning my neck to look around the corner.
Just like in my dream, shabby furniture was randomly placed around the room, pointing at nothing in particular. In a corner was a pile of dusty, ripped up presents covered in dozens of different types of wrapping paper and bows, speaking of many different homes being looted. On the far wall were two children, a boy and girl, chained and shackled. Beyond them were cages with children crouched inside. Heat rushed to my face, and I nearly saw spots as anger flooded me. I’d been in a cage before. No one should know how that feels.
Picking out the half-gremlin boy that Dietrich had come to me about wasn’t difficult. He was in one of the cages, crouched low, his scaly fingers reaching through the plastic vents. Somehow Krampus had known better than to put him in a metal cage where his gremlin abilities would have let him escape easily. His steely grey eyes met mine. He wasn’t crying or panicking. He was just patiently waiting, as though he expected someone to come release them.
Beyond the cages was the doorway I’d seen in my dream. It led to somewhere full of orange light and shadows. The random gusts of heat were coming from that doorway.
The only difference from my dream was the decorations. Strings of multicolored lights were hung haphazardly around the room by crooked, bent nails. Some were blinking, some were steady, and one string was burnt out completely. Nothing matched, just like the furniture. To the side of the presents was a dying tree. It was only partially decorated, and many of the ornaments were broken, as though he’d taken it from a home and dragged it here, breaking branches and pine needles as he went, not caring how dirty or dying it was.
The only thing missing from my dream was the demon himself.
“He’s not here,” Ronnie whispered as she stepped forward, her gun held out in front of her, sweeping an arc around the room.
“He’ll be back,” the girl chained to the wall said, her voice flat and defeated. There were angry red marks on her neck and face, and I thought I saw dried blood at the collar of her shirt.
“Then we’d better move fast,” I said as I strode to the wall.
“No,” the crying boy said, “you have to hide. Get out of here. He’ll be back any second. He always is.”
His face was streaked in red and white, his eyes puffy and swollen, and his lips were chapped. He’d been crying so much that he’d started to dehydrate himself. Recognizing him was difficult, but he was the mayor’s son, Carlos Martinez Junior. My heart ached for him. Chained to a wall and being tortured, and he was worried about Ronnie’s and my safety. How could he be such a bad kid that he deserved to be snatched by Krampus? Knoll’s words echoed in my head that no kid was truly bad, and guilt slammed into me. I would kill that demon if he came back.
“It’s okay,” I said, finding the courage to rush forward. “We came to get you. We know what’s going on.”
“No,” CJ said, his voice cracking. “He’ll kill you. He’ll take you to hell, and you’ll never come back.”
“It’s not hell,” the girl said, her eyes rolling to the ceiling. “He takes you to his mommy, and she eats you.”
“Does it make a difference?” CJ spat, straining against his shackles. “You die. That’s all that matters. He takes you, and you don’t come back.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, shut up,” CJ said.
Ronnie spun on the two kids. “Listen, it doesn’t matter, okay? We know what he does. How he does it doesn’t matter.”
“Says you,” the girl muttered. “You’re not the one he’s feeding to his mom.”
“His mom doesn’t eat us,” CJ said, his voice pitching.
“For the love of frogs, both of you shut up.” I reached for the cuff around CJ’s right wrist. My kinetic power was already snapping at my hands, but I’d forgotten to take off my glove. With a frustrated growl, I ripped off the glove. The metal cuff was cold, and CJ’s skin was hot with pain where my fingers brushed.
“Oh God,” the girl said.
She sounded so different that I looked up, and Ronnie spun toward her.
“What?” Ronnie asked in a strained whisper.
I realized I wasn’t holding the cuff anymore.
“He’s coming,” the girl whispered. Her voice was strangled, as though she was trying not to cry. She was hanging on to her façade of indifference and defeat by the skin of her teeth.
“I don’t hear anything,” Ronnie said, her gun in both hands, pointing at the doorway.
“We do,” CJ whispered. A tear spilled down his cheek. I reached for the cuff again, but he said, “No, it’s too late. You have to go.”
Then I heard the sound of hooves on stone.
Krampus was coming.
Chapter 17
The hooves clacked against the stone floor, a staccato that ratcheted my spine until it nearly broke. Ronnie met my eyes, and without a word, we dove to hide. Just as in my dream, I hid behind the pile of presents. Ronnie dropped behind the stacked cages. I prayed the bodies of the children would obscure her
shape. If they didn’t, I hoped she was ready with that gun.
Beneath the sound of his hooves, I heard Krampus muttering incoherent words. He was still too far away for me to make them out. No other voice answered him, but the closer he got, the angrier he sounded, like a dog fighting over a bone. I peered over the presents, and the girl chained to the wall shook her head, silently telling me to get down. Then the shapes of hooves and horns and shoulders filled the doorway, blocking out the light. Heat rushed out around him, filling the room and tugging at the edges of his tattered, faded clothing.
“Ungrateful, spiteful, foul woman,” he muttered. His hooves nearly cracked the floor as his tail whipped behind him.
The gust of heat filled the cavern with the sour stench of burned sulfur. Panic crawled inside me with claws and sharp teeth. The pull of the portal flickered inside me. If we lost our grip on the portal, it would close, and Ronnie and I would have to cast all over again to get the kids out. The summoning charm Joey was waiting to cast would only pull Ronnie and me home, leaving the kids behind. If we lost the portal, the trip would be for naught.
Risking taking my eyes off Krampus, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my connection to the portal. In my mind’s eye, I could almost see the streams of energy flowing out of Ronnie and me. I followed that connection into the snowy world beyond the cavern until the energy became a doorway, bright and shining in the night. As I focused on it, the streams of energy became thicker, stronger, and the portal stopped flickering. I almost thought I saw Artie waiting for me on the other side. My relief was short-lived however, as a bone-jarring growl rippled through the air, crawling up my body and making my eyes snap open.
“Naughty, naughty,” Krampus whispered. “Sneaking spells and magic.”
He sucked on his teeth, tsk-tsking, and I slowly lifted my head until I could just peek over the top present. Krampus was swinging his head back and forth, his red eyes wide and searching for the source of magic. I dropped down just as he swung his head in my direction. My stomach ached, and I was afraid I would be sick. Splitting my concentration and energy was difficult.
“Naughty, naughty.” A sliding sound followed Krampus’s words as he picked up his birch branch and dragged it along the floor. “Is someone playing tricks on us? Maybe it’s you?”
Peering around the mound of presents, I saw him pressing a clawed finger to CJ’s forehead until he broke skin. A slow trickle of blood traced between CJ’s eyes and along the side of his nose. He whimpered in pain, biting his bottom lip to try to stop the noise.
Krampus smiled and shook his head. “No, not you. But maybe you.” He shifted to the girl chained next to CJ.
She met the devil’s stare without flinching. The record player went quiet as the song ended and shifted to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” The quality of the record was rough, as if sand was embedded in the grooves of the vinyl. It was enough to set my teeth on edge—I couldn’t take much more. I wanted Ronnie to shoot the crazed devil, but we had no way of knowing if silver bullets would take him down. Krampus hummed along with the song, touching the girl’s cheek with one finger and leaving a smear of CJ’s blood on her pale face.
“You better watch out,” he whispered, “you better not cry. You better not pout. I’m telling you why.”
His voice stayed quiet and menacing as he sang, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him as though, with those creepy lyrics, he was casting his own spell. My fingers gripped a present, making the paper crinkle. Krampus whipped his head around, but CJ struggled against his chains and cried out, the noises covering my folly.
“You better not cry,” Krampus said before jabbing CJ in the stomach with the birch branch, making him cry out in surprise.
But Krampus wasn’t looking at me anymore. I released the breath I’d been holding, willing my body to freeze in place, and realized I’d started to lose my connection to the portal again. With a silent curse, I concentrated on the connection again, letting the magic in my body swell and fill the flow of energy to the outside.
Krampus growled again. “He sees you when you’re sleeping,” Krampus hissed, making my eyes fly open again. “He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.” With every word, he stepped closer to my hiding place, the twigs of his branch dragging along the floor.
The sliding noise crawled up my back. I’d pushed my luck too far.
“Let us go!” CJ cried, startling both Krampus and me.
But it was Krampus who roared and spun toward the chained boy. He struck CJ across the face with the back of his hand. “Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.”
Krampus spun away from CJ and stormed over to the record player. With one cloven foot, he kicked the table over, sending the record player crashing into the wall. He waved one hand at the doorway in the wall, and the portal to Hell disappeared, throwing the cavern into an eerie glow as the only light came from the mismatched Christmas lights. Cold filled the room with the only source of heat gone. But worst of all was the silence that descended upon us.
My heart thudded as the children shifted and fidgeted to rattle their chains and cages, but with one glare from Krampus, they fell still. Krampus stood away from the children, in the middle of the room, to listen. His eyebrows twitched back and forth, his red eyes catching the blinking lights. I was sure he could hear my traitorous heart, the blood rushing in my ears, the energy rushing out of me to keep our escape open.
“You better watch out,” Krampus whispered.
Like a child hiding under the covers, I closed my eyes.
“You better watch out.” He was moving, his hooves quiet on the stone floor. That he could choose to be so silent, so sneaky, was the scariest thing yet.
Pressure grew in my head, and I realized someone else was using magic. I gritted my teeth and told myself to keep breathing as Ronnie called magic to her hands, trying to perform a lock breaking spell without saying the incantation. Silent spells were horribly difficult and tricky at the best of times. I just hoped that the locks didn’t explode and give her away.
The children shifted and fidgeted again, the noise of their bodies and the rattling chains doing a lot to cover the sound of Ronnie moving about, but Krampus didn’t seem to care anymore. I almost felt his eyes burning through the packages hiding me. I felt like a trapped bird waiting for the cat to strike.
Pressure burst in my mind like a bubble popping, and I knew Ronnie had broken one lock, miraculously silently. Krampus grumbled something unintelligible, and I wondered if he was fighting the urge to look for the source of Ronnie’s magic. He wanted to find me, the source of the energy flowing out of the cavern.
I wanted him to come for me to give Ronnie time and a chance, even if the seven-year-old inside me was screaming to run, to get away, to find Mom and hide behind her legs. But it was better that he come for me and get away from the children he’d been abusing. I couldn’t think about the children we were too late for, the ones that CJ had said he’d taken into the realm beyond that door and lost forever.
Pressure built in my head again as Ronnie moved to another lock. Blood rushed in my ears as Ronnie struggled with keeping her incantation silent. Working to release the children, she’d let go of her concentration on the portal beyond the tunnel, leaving it to me to keep the energy flowing to keep the portal open. I struggled under the sudden shift in energy and the weight of the power it needed. A groan pressed at my teeth, but I swallowed it back.
“You better watch out,” Krampus whispered again. A satisfied tone colored his words.
He was close enough that I could smell him, the musty odor of being cooped up behind closed doors, smoke, and sulfur. It was unpleasant at best. I opened my eyes to see a shadow looming against the wall behind me, the string lights still blinking and flickering in a bizarre pattern.
“Trying to be sneaky,” Krampus said, his voice cool and even. “Trying to distract me, look the other way. But I know where you are. I see you when
you’re sleeping. I know when you’re awake.”
My fingers flexed and closed into fists until my nails bit into my palms. Power surged through me, coursing through my veins until my arms were heavy with it. I was going to set those presents on fire if I didn’t get out of the cave.
Ronnie broke another lock, and my right ear popped. As soon as she started again, my head felt as if it would implode. I wanted to yell at her to just speak the incantation because I couldn’t take much more, but the shadow shifted above me. I saw Krampus’s horns looming over the top of the presents.
My time was up. He was going to snatch me, just like in my nightmares. His claws would dig into the soft flesh of my belly, and he’d throw me into the mouth of Helheim while he licked my blood from his claws. Just as he’d done with countless children for generations. And the gods knew, I’d been naughty.
His breath was pungent and sour, and it was all I could breathe. I had to move. I had to move now, or he would catch me. Snatch me. Eat me.
I was moving before I could think about it. My boots slid on the stone floor, making me scramble before I could get purchase and throw myself forward. Claws swiped at the air, making a whistling noise as they reached for me. One claw scraped my throat enough to break skin, but not enough to stop me.
A scream caught in my throat, nearly strangling me, but the pain on my neck gave me the boost of power to move, to run, to tear down the tunnel with the devil chasing me. My feet pounded the floor, the sounds echoing all around me. Krampus’s hooves rapped right behind me, each step like a gunshot that threatened to rip out my back and send me careening to the ground.
I burst out of the tunnel into the snowy night and flung myself forward, willing myself to hold my balance and run, just run. The heat of the devil pushed me forward as the cold air tore at my face, making my cuts burn.
Almost too late, I realized I was running right for the portal, the flow of energy from my body pulling me toward it like a fishing line. If Ronnie got the children free, she would take them there. I couldn’t lead Krampus to the portal just to have him waiting for them. And Joey—he would swallow her whole.
Yuletide (Matilda Kavanagh Novels Book 3) Page 16
