Chapter 20 #2
Ronan and I share a look as the next wave gathers itself. We’re both breathing hard, clothes in ribbons, bleeding from what feels like a thousand paper-cut assassins.
“I always hoped I’d go out in a blaze of glory,” Ronan says. “Slightly more tinsel than anticipated, but I’ll take it—”
The front wall of the factory explodes.
What was once a structural wall is abruptly replaced by a truck, a great deal of noise, and the sort of impact that removes one’s feet without consultation.
Ronan and I hit the floor in tandem as elves scatter in all directions, the air filling with dust, splinters, and the consequences of poor planning.
I push myself up through the debris, coughing, waving a hand through the haze. “I would like,” I say, to no one in particular, “one problem at a time.”
The dust settles enough for me to make out what is coming.
The coven.
The truck idles where the wall used to be, and Crinkshaw steps down from the driver’s seat wearing an expression so profoundly unimpressed it may, in fact, be celebration. Behind him, the rest of my brethren pour through the gap like a particularly well-dressed disaster.
Wes first, baseball bat over his shoulder and grinning like this is exactly the sort of evening he’d hoped for.
Damian, one of the first to join us, wields a mace laden with spikes.
Ranu, a dark-haired former priestess, moves beside him, her staff angles just so, the blade at its end already promising unpleasant outcomes.
And more behind them—my coven, my thoroughly unreasonable, deeply competent coven—fanning out across the factory floor with the sort of calm that suggests this is not their first festive ambush.
Something in my chest loosens. Just a fraction.
Even Crinkshaw joins the line, straightening his cuffs as if preparing for a particularly aggressive dinner engagement.
They advance as one.
Armed.
Decided.
The rogue elves groan, which I take to be a positive development.
“I don’t have a clever line,” Crinkshaw says, surveying the scene with mild distaste. “Ghouls do not, as a rule, do quips. However,” he adds, adjusting his sleeves, “I am prepared to make an exception.”
He cracks his knuckles.
“I guess you must have…a crink in your neck.”
A rogue elf coughs into the silence.
The fight resumes.
The coven fans out and tears through the first row of elves, and in seconds the factory turns into a blizzard of glitter, streamers, and chiming bells thick enough to choke on.
With renewed force, Ronan and I battle to the back. Toward Holly. It’s slow going, and if we were mortals, we’d already be dead. Still, we make the door.
“Go,” he gasps, punctuating it with savage chops that send an elf spinning. “I’ll hold them back.”
“The coven…” An elf’s fist connects mid-sentence.
“I’ll keep them safe, Sire.” He catches my forearm and hauls me in, grip iron tight. “Save her.”
I clap his shoulder once.
“I want it noted,” he adds, voice hoarse, “that I kicked an elf fourteen feet.”
A laugh tears out of me. “You win, friend.”
Then I’m through the door.
The corridor beyond is dim and close, all steam and dripping pipes, and the noise of battle falls away as I push forward. A thin strip of light outlines a doorway in front of me, and I race toward it.
A steel door waits at the end. Locked.
I hit it once. Twice.
The hinges scream on the third strike. On the fourth, the entire thing gives way and goes flying through the air.
I step through—and stop.
Holly is suspended from the ceiling, bound to a chair that swings over a vat of bubbling, brown liquid. Below her, elves caper and skitter in looping circles, their celebration turning the scene into something grotesque. The place stinks of burnt sugar.
“Is that caramel?”
God help me. It is caramel.
They are going to turn her into a Christmas candy apple.
“NICK! WATCH OUT!”
I don’t look to see why. I move.
A blade carves through the space I just vacated, close enough that air rushes past me as I hit the ground and roll.
When I come up, a giant, grinning snowman is beaming at me.
Not the friendly, lopsided kind—this snowman looks like he has strong opinions about upper body training. He smirks at me, red hat tipped at a menacing rather than cheerful angle, and there’s a red and green sash tied at his waist like he’s about to host something both Christmassy and violent.
I stare at it for a beat.
“Is that…an aggressively competitive snowman? You’re joking.”
Holly screams as the snowman charges, hauling a grotesquely oversized claymore that gleams in the low light. I throw myself sideways just in time as the blade slams into the concrete where I stood with a crack that sends shards skittering across the floor.
“Why does he have a six-pack?” I demand, scrambling up. “What’s next? The Yule Goat with a machete? Snowarzenegger?”
The snowman declines to engage in dialogue. Apparently, he’s not big on conversation, nor does he embody the gentle, polite charm one might expect from a monster made of marshmallow.
Pity.
He’s also the only thing between me and Holly.
The claymore comes again. I duck inside the swing this time, close enough to feel the rush of it over my shoulder and drive my fist into his ribs. Then I hit it harder again.
It’s like punching a cathedral.