Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
ELISA
The air has turned frigid. Each breath slips from between my lips as white wisps of smoke. I watch as the poor girl stumbles out of the alley and into the safety of the busy streets beyond. He drugged her, attacked her, and tried to rape her.
That could have been me. It would have been me—if it weren’t for my monster, that is.
Rage boils inside me as I think about the way Hans has used countless women before me and intended to hurt countless more after me. He has no remorse, no sense of compassion for the humans he’s taken from. Jack’s right—this motherfucker’s reign of destruction ends tonight.
“You stole from me!” Hans rages as he cradles his bleeding hand.
“Me?” I ask, my mouth aghast at his boldness. “Where are my bags, Hans? They’re not truly lost, are they? You paid that woman to drug me and then planned to get me alone and assault me, didn’t you?”
His cold sneer is enough to send a shiver down my spine.
“It’s easy enough to find sad foreign girls, desperately starved for attention, willing to believe the fantasy I’ve concocted for them.
Such a weak-minded thing, you jenter, so desperate for a prince that you’ll let the wolf lead you straight to his den. ”
Next to me, I feel Jack’s claws against my hand. Strong, reassuring, steady, and cold… very cold, in fact…
“Well, I guess it’s good for me then.” I take a step towards Hans. Then another. Closing the distance between us. “That the wolf is too hubris to realize he’s not the predator.” I stop when I’m close enough to see just how bloodshot his eyes are. “He’s the prey.”
With a single swift motion, I bring up the jagged chunk of ice that Jack deposited in my hand.
The long, thin, flat chunk is awkward to hold but it gets the job done.
I slide the sharp edge along the skin of Hans’ throat, leaving a thin red line across his flesh.
His eyes go wide in horror. And then the blood begins to flow.
A cascade of sticky warmth pours from where I struck him, a river of red staining the front of him.
“You did well, litill snaer.” Jack’s imposing form stands beside me, staring as Hans places his hands on his throat, trying to stop the inevitable flow of blood. “But you didn’t get quite deep enough to sever the artery.”
“You mean, he’ll bleed out slowly?” My tone is sickly sweet and false. “What a shame.”
Jack’s responding chuckle has my stomach twisting with need. His darkness sets my soul aflame with desperate desire. We’re two halves of the same type of fucked up.
“What a wicked little creature you are,” he coos as his claws caress my skin. Need pools between my thighs at his tender touch.
“Please, Daddy,” I whine as he skims his sharp claws up and down the column of my neck in the most achingly delightful way.
“Finish what you started, little one, then I will take you home and show you how good girls get rewarded.”
His words are depraved. He’s talking about murder as if it were a gift on Christmas Day. Maybe Hans’ death will be a gift, though—a gift to all the girls he’ll now never get the chance to harm.
Jack hands me a second icicle. This one is long and sharp—a pike of ice. Perfect. Grabbing the cold crystals, I move back towards Hans’ paling form. He looks angry, even close to death.
“You fucking bitch,” he whimpers. “I’m going to—”
I cut him off before he can finish his thought.
I’ve heard enough of his shit. With a firm grip, I shove the sharpened spear into his face.
A scream of pain and fury slips from my lips as my weapon pierces his eye.
I feel the pop as the muscle gives and blood begins to pour from the socket, but I don’t stop.
I continue to shove until I meet the resistance of his skull.
“A hand please, Daddy,” I ask when I’m no longer able to push the icicle further.
“Of course, my queen.”
Jack steps behind me, wrapping his hands around the ice below mine.
He growls, the sound vibrating my back. Then he pushes.
I can feel the moment the thin sphenoid bone gives, allowing the icy instrument to enter his brain.
Only then do we release the spike, allowing Hans’ body to collapse to the dirty ground below.
The bloody icicle sticks straight out of his skull.
“He will bleed out within moments, Snow Angel.” Jack places his hand on my shoulder. “It’s time for us to go home.”
I haven’t had a place that held a sense of home in a very long time. Not since my parents were murdered. But as the sled crests the hill and we enter the Myrkvier, a sense of calm contentment settles over me. This place, these trees, they feel like home.
“Daddy?” I ask, breaking the comfortable silence we’ve been riding in on our way home. “I hate to ask, but I’m covered in blood. Could we go back to Hans’ cabin and grab some clothes?”
Father Winter looks down at me lovingly, his chiseled human face tics in uncertainty.
He changed back into his human form so we could slip from the alley without drawing attention.
The entire ride home, he’s held me close, touching me, holding me, driving me wild.
I need him. But first, I need to get out of this blood-soaked dress. Faeir’s dark eyes scan mine.
“I’d prefer you not have any clothes, pretty girl.” His hand slips high up my thigh, skimming beneath the hem of my dress. “Free for me to take and use, whenever I please.”
I squirm, his words sending tingles of need between my legs. I want to be used, taken, and owned by my monster Daddy.
“I’m yours to use,” I pant as his fingers slide against the thin cotton of my panties teasingly. “But it’s also cold.”
“Smoke,” he says as his forehead furrows in concern and he removes his hand. He turns to look between the trees. “Fire.”
We speed towards the cabin, the reindeer rushing between the thick firs with grace.
Snow hangs along the evergreen needles, glistening in the low light of the moon.
As we draw closer, I smell it too. There’s definitely a fire.
In just a few moments, the sled bursts through the trees and we enter the clearing. The sight there takes my breath away.
“Volva!” My fierce monster roars as he exits the sled, making his way towards the fire beyond. Annoyance radiates off him in waves. “What in the name of the Alf?er are you doing?”
In the center of the clearing, right outside the cabin, a large fire blazes.
Inside the dancing flames is what appears to be a large pyre made of wood.
In a circle, surrounding the fire are bodies, bodies of women, some long dead it appears, laid neatly in the soft snow.
Among them dances an old woman who seems to be swaying to the beat of a drum that only she can hear.
It’s a mystical and macabre display that I can’t seem to pull my eyes away from.
“Hello, Faeir,” the old woman croons without missing a beat. Something about her seems familiar and yet I can’t place it. “I see you’ve returned with blood on your hands and your Skaeir on your arm.”
“What are you doing?” Jack asks again as she continues to dance among the flames.
I join them around the fire, the heat from the flames warming my skin.
I stare down at one of the women laid across the ground.
Her eyes stare up at the heavens above, clouded, vacant, lifeless.
Despite the decay, I can tell she was once a beautiful girl.
A girl who deserved to live a long life full of love.
And Hans took that from her. He deserved everything he got.
“They, like all beautiful creatures of this earth, deserve a proper send off, Faeir!” She answers while she continues to sway and dance, mimicking the movements of the flames. Now that I’m closer, I can see her face has been painted with runes. “Their souls called to me, begging for peace.”
He nods solemnly, glancing between the bodies displayed among the snow. His expression is cold and hard. I know he’s wishing Hans had suffered even more, just as I am.
“We’re going in to grab a few things. Burn the cabin once we’re out,” he declares before sliding his hand into mine, our fingers interlocking. Despite the cold, his touch sears my skin with desire.
The older woman’s eyes blaze brighter than the fire as she takes in his words. The promise of righteous destruction seems to stoke an ember of chaos buried beneath her wrinkles and gray hair.
“With pleasure, Faeir,” she cackles as her movements become wilder.
Without a second’s hesitation, I’m bolting into the cabin. It dawns on me that this place must have been a house of horrors to many women who came before me.
“Break down that door,” I demand as we enter the home, indicating the locked door on the side of the kitchen.
I can’t not know.
Jack throws a concerned glance my way before letting out a small sigh and kicking at the door. It immediately gives, the wood splintering from the lock, and the door swinging open. And as it does, part of me wishes it hadn’t.
Inside is a room of horrors. A room of evil. A room that will soon be burned to the ground.
“Come, grab some clothes, and let’s leave this place. Let me take you home, Snow Angel.” His cool touch jolts me from inside my mind.
Gently, he pulls on my shoulder so I’m no longer looking at the blood-soaked walls, the torture tools, and restraints that cover the room next to the fucking kitchen. Who the fuck sets up their torture chamber next to their refrigerator? What the hell is that shit?
Dashing down the hall, I throw open the door to the room I stayed in.
I grab what little things I had on me when I arrived, plus anything I can find in the drawers that might fit me.
I may never know what truly happened to the rest of my belongings, but maybe those things belong to the old me, one that doesn’t truly exist anymore anyway.
Smoke begins to fill the home, tickling my throat.
“Time to go,” his deep voice rumbles across the small home. I throw everything into a tote bag I find in the closet with the emblem from the Savannah Public Library on it. I wonder to myself which one of his victims brought it here.
Running back down the hall, I stop in front of the bookshelf. There, among the discarded Twilight novels, is the book I found about the Myrkvier and I shove it in my tote. Beauty like that book doesn’t deserve to go down in flames.
When I reach the front door, my daddy is waiting for me. A small smile pulls at his handsome face as he holds out his hand. “Ready to go home, my queen?”
My stomach flips. To not only have a handsome, though slightly monstrous, daddy waiting to take care of me, but a place to finally call home again…
It’s everything. Fuck Mariah Carey and her White Christmas bullshit.
This year, all I want for Christmas is to be stuffed full of candy cane cum by my Monster Daddy.
“Ready,” I say as I take his hand and let him lead me across the threshold.