Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
“Drive faster,” I tell Ronan, the first time in close to a century I’ve uttered those words. Outside, the snow skates sideways, and somewhere a string of Christmas lights blinks SOS in red and green.
Holly isn’t picking up her phone.
Another call goes straight to voicemail, and something cold and vicious settles under my ribs.
I no longer care about the holiday, or about the stupid Winter Festival, or even Willow Creek. All of that can hang—and if Santa and his rogue elves have harmed so much as a single hair on her head, I will personally redecorate the North Pole with the fat man’s remains.
We fishtail into the factory yard. I’m out before the car fully stops, hitting the ground in a roll and coming up running. Behind me, Ronan’s yelling something about slowing down and waiting.
Not a chance.
The trunk slams open and he retrieves that absurd battle axe of his, but I don’t look back.
My mind tries to supply images of a horror movie I have no interest in seeing, so I override them: Holly bundled in one of Crinkshaw’s tartan blankets, cocoa in one hand, with two marshmallows because three is chaos, correcting an elf on the difference between spruce and pine while I stand there and glower.
I hit the factory at speed, fury burning clean and bright through everything else. Charming restraint can go to hell. So can patience. So can anything that isn’t getting to her.
The doors don’t open so much as fail to remain attached when I kick through them, the impact ripping them from their moorings hard enough to echo.
Inside, the place is dim and dust-choked—and Holly’s nowhere to be seen.
But her footprints are.
I’m not sure what she was wearing on her feet, but the mess in the dust tells the story. A larger set, surrounded by a chaotic maelstrom of smaller, elf-sized prints. They surrounded her. Toyed with her. Took her to the back.
She was here.
And now she’s not.
I follow.
The shadows shift before I’ve taken more than a few steps.
Dozens of glittering eyes wink into existence, followed by tinkling laughter that scrapes along my nerves.
The scent of burnt cinnamon burns my nostrils as rogue elves begin to emerge—from behind crates, beneath broken machinery, and from spaces that should not reasonably contain that many bodies.
They reek of boozy eggnog and pine cleaner—correction: spruce. Even now, accuracy matters.
I crouch, ready for anything. Ronan is still outside. For the moment, it’s just me.
One rogue elf steps forward, his sneer stretched too wide, while others fan out across the factory floor. There are at least two dozen. Possibly more. The brave one clasps his hands behind his back. Like he’s about to deliver a festive speech.
“Draven,” he says. “Finally.”
“It’s…you,” I respond.
“Greg,” he corrects, presumably expecting applause. “Your worst nightmare.”
I blink.
“I’m sorry, but have we met? I didn’t even know any of you had names,” I say.
“And my worst nightmare involves diving into a swimming pool and emerging in the middle of the ocean. It happened once. Amphitrite was annoyed with me for dating her sister. In fairness, she has fifty. Took me three days to reach shore. This—” I gesture at him, “—is not even in my top ten worst dreams.”
“I’m the head elf,” he says, puffing up slightly. “Jingle’s replacement. You’ll be dealing with me now.” He flexes what could generously be described as muscles. “Twinkle, twinkle, precious vamp. Do you miss your little tramp?”
“Points for rhyme. Minus points for taste.”
“It’s time we end this, Draven.”
“You’ve rehearsed that, haven’t you?”
I punch Greg, and he bursts apart in a spray of tinsel and bell chimes.
The metallic jangle rings up my arm as if I’ve struck a particularly festive gong. For a fleeting moment, I find myself wondering whether he was in the middle of “Ding Dong Merrily on High” when he went, which feels like the sort of detail that ought to matter.
The rest hiss and scatter, and I raise a single finger, shushing them all with the authority of a man who has decided he is done with being inconvenienced. They stare back, all glitter and malice, which feels unnecessarily mean-spirited.
“I think we’ve rather decisively moved past the Marquess-of-Queensberry-but-with-tinsel rules, chaps.”
My hands drop to my sides and my fingers clench into fists. Something cold and impatient settles beneath my skin. My knuckles crack, deliberately.
“Let’s begin.”
I don’t wait for agreement.
The first elf goes down under a backhand that sends a shock clean through my shoulder, the second skids across the factory floor with a screech of boots and metal as my kick connects, and a third meets my forehead with a crack that feels deeply satisfying before disappearing into a crate that erupts in a storm of glittering sequins.
They scatter everywhere—angels and reindeer and robins flashing in the dim light, sticking to my coat and catching in my hair as I move.
The air fills with it—tinny, sweet, and wrong, all stale eggnog and burnt sugar—and I lean into the fight, faster now, harder, the edges of restraint peeling away with each strike.
They swarm.
One lands on my back, claws dragging hot across my neck.
I wrench him off and fling him aside, only for another to latch onto my calf with an enthusiasm I do not appreciate.
I kick him loose, but there are too many of them, too many hands and teeth and sharp little laughs, and they pile in with cheerful violence until I’m driven down beneath the weight of them.
I hit the floor hard, and lash out at anything that comes within reach—catching fabric, bone, something that squeaks indignantly—but it’s not enough. Their numbers close over me, pressing in, and for a brief, unwelcome moment, I realize I may have made a catastrophic miscalculation.
“BATTLE!!!!!”
The cry reverberates through the hollow factory, and I keep one rogue elf in a headlock and another at arm’s length. Yet another elf nibbles on my ankle, and I give him a very firm and deliberate kick in the head.
Ronan stands framed in the doorway, axe slung across his back, his face painted in red Christmas stripes as though he’s declared war on the concept of subtlety.
Somewhere between the car and here, he has found both time and conviction, and the result is a man who looks like a Viking has been aggressively sponsored by a candy cane.
The elves hesitate, and their twisted holiday glee gutters into something that looks suspiciously like unease.
Their eyes dart between each other and Ronan, silently debating who’s going to be the sacrificial first strike.
The bravest—or most foolish—takes a tentative step forward. Stops. Reconsiders. Then freezes.
“Go ahead,” Ronan growls, his voice like gravel and festive violence. “Make my Bloodmas.”
The elves exchange another glance.
Ronan grins. “Merry. Freaking. Bloodmas.”
He starts throwing knives.
They come from everywhere—jacket, boot, belt, kilt, and at least one location I refuse to think about—each one thwapping through the air with brutal precision. Every throw lands. Every impact bursts into tinsel and bells.
I may have underestimated when I guessed he carried a dozen knives. Now it seems likely he contains a small, well-organized arsenal. I’m briefly concerned about the physics of all of this, and left wondering how he manages to avoid clinking when he walks.
For a man his size, he moves with alarming grace, cutting through the elves in a deadly, spinning rhythm. One of them jerks in my grip as a blade punches clean through its chest and it bursts apart, showering me in glitter. The air fills with it—bright, violent, absurdly festive.
This is less The Fairytale of New York and more Deck the Halls with casualties.
I take the opening and press the attack, driving into the nearest cluster with renewed enthusiasm. We make a respectable dent, but it doesn’t hold. For every elf that bursts, more spill forward to take its place, giggling, slavering, slick with eggnog and bad intent.
I hate elves.
Especially rogue ones.
Ronan’s knives finally run dry. He reaches back and hauls the axe free, the blade catching what little light there is as his grin sharpens to match it. The shaft alone is the length of a small argument, and he swings with full commitment.
The axe whistles through the air in a wide, magnificent arc.
Every elf steps neatly aside.
It is, objectively, an excellent swing. Just not especially useful—like a ceremonial parade float with ambitions—and the follow-through takes him off balance, taking him down in a clatter as the axe skids away across the floor.
He looks up at me, sheepish. “I genuinely thought that would work.”
The elves surge again, this time with purpose, and the fight turns ugly. Small, sharp wounds accumulate—cuts, slices, the irritating persistence of things that refuse to die properly—and soon my shirt is in tatters. Ronan is faring little better.
We’re driven back until we’re standing back-to-back, breath coming harder now, weight shared whether we like it or not.
“Is this seriously what kills us?” he asks, incredulous. “Elves? Rogue elves?”
“A soothsayer in the thirteenth century predicted something along these lines. I assumed she was drunk. Or knitting.”
We raise our fists as the elves regroup and close in again. We’ve done damage—considerable, festive damage—but it makes no difference.
There are too many of them.
The circle tightens, and I brace for the next rush, already calculating how long we can hold before something important starts detaching.
Holly should not be part of that calculation.
I was meant to keep her out of this. Keep her somewhere sensible, preferably far away from weaponized sparkles and homicidal holiday décor—and instead I’ve managed to lose her in the middle of it while I get myself thoroughly, and somewhat humiliatingly, overrun.