Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
The battle unfolds around me as I carve my way through rogue elves, trying to get closer to Santa.
The town square has become a demented holiday diorama—townspeople fighting elves, elves fighting vampires, and, at the center of it all, a deranged wind sprite cackling as he tries to siphon magic from a snow globe.
It is, without question, the fourth strangest Christmas I’ve ever attended.
Wes is holding his own beside the young server from the diner, both of them moving with surprising coordination. Across the square, Marcy and Ronan have somehow formed an alliance and are laying waste to anything pointy-eared and festive.
Notably, no one is teaming up with Crinkshaw.
Holly swings her snow shovel into the side of a rogue elf’s head with admirable commitment. The impact knocks her slightly off balance, but she recovers quickly and, catching me watching, flashes a lopsided thumbs-up.
It’s adorable.
The tide is turning in our favor, but a pulsing barrier of magic still surrounds Santa, keeping everyone just far enough back. We need to break through it—get close enough to stop whatever he’s doing with that cursed globe.
Around us, Willow Creek has escalated this into a full seasonal production. Someone has set up speakers and a DJ table, blasting aggressively remixed Christmas music. Others fall back to the Nanaimo-and-cocoa station my vampires have established, regrouping before diving back in.
Despite the circumstances, people appear to be enjoying themselves.
I spot an opening and make for Holly, dodging a stray elf and a poorly aimed snowball as I go. She sees me coming and grins.
“Holly—” I start.
She shushes me.
“No time, Draven,” she says. “We’ve got the rogue elves on the run. It’s time for us to stop Santa.”
“Have you seen Crinkshaw?”
“Right here, Sire.”
The zombie materializes at my shoulder, and I react with all the dignity of a startled cat flung into a bath.
“Gah! Don’t do that. Where did you come from?”
“I’ve been standing beside you the entire time,” he says.
“I didn’t notice you.”
“That was what they carved on my tombstone.”
I stare at him for a beat, deeply unconvinced by both the statement and the universe that allowed it, but his timing is inconveniently perfect. He’s exactly where I need him to be. All we have to do now is feed his existential disappointment to Santa.
Right then.
“Time to end this,” I say.
Holly gives me a single nod. Crinkshaw shrugs, which for him counts as enthusiasm. We press forward into the maelstrom.
Willow Creek rises to meet us—shoulder-checking the elves, battling back the gale with snowballs, cookie sheets, garland lariats, and candy-cane staves—holding a narrow, glittering lane open straight to Santa.
Holly and I push through it, winds tearing at us hard enough to sting, forcing us to shield our eyes as wrapping paper, splintered candy cane, and tinsel whip past in a festive attempt on our lives.
Santa stands with his hands raised, dragging what power he can from the snow globe. He still can’t force it back into the tree—thank every minor miracle available—and that failure is the only reason we’re still in this fight.
We press on, shoulder to shoulder. Crinkshaw follows with the air of someone attending a particularly inconvenient meeting.
Then, with one final surge, we break through the wind and step into the eye of it all.
Santa’s eyes burn with manic delight, his form flickering at the edges like he can’t quite hold himself together. He shifts from foot to foot, jittering with stolen power, frost-crystal beard rattling softly as red and green energy spits and snaps from his fingers.
He notices us instantly.
“Holly Frost!” he says, voice threading through the wind like it’s being dragged across broken glass.
“And Niklaus Draven. Of course. You always did have a talent for arriving just in time to fail.” The air tightens around him.
“You won’t stop me now. Not with this much power. Not when I’m this close.”
“Holly—” I begin.
She’s already stepped forward.
“You’re done, Santa,” she says, in a way that feels almost offensive in this storm. “Your elves are losing. The town’s awake. You’re not taking Christmas away from people who actually like it.”
His grin widens—too wide, stretching oddly through the blur of him.
“Oh, really? Think you’re going to win now you’ve brought the vampires into this?” he asks, delighted. “How wonderfully ironic. Shall we let the wolves guard the pantry as well? I do admire a bold strategic error.”
“Enough.” I step in front of Holly before he can build momentum again. “It’s over. Walk away from Willow Creek and don’t come back.”
“Eat Christmas, Draven.”
The magic hits before the words finish landing.
A blast of red and green energy tears toward us, sharp and violent, the air screaming as it goes. Instinct takes over—I shove Holly aside, hard enough that she stumbles clear, and twist away as the strike scorches past me. Heat and frost rake across my skin in the same breath.
It slams into the snowbank behind us, detonating in a spray of hissing steam and charred ice.
Santa laughs.
The sound is wrong—like sleigh bells dragged over broken teeth. The wind coils tighter around him as he lifts his hands again, power gathering fast, unstable, eager.
I roll to my feet and sprint back toward Crinkshaw and Holly. He’s still standing like a man waiting for a delayed train and expecting worse news. She’s already pushing herself up, her green eyes bright and blazing with determination, and the sight of her cuts through the noise in my head.
“Nick, he’s insanely powerful,” she says.
“I know.”
“We’ve got to get some Crinkshaw in him.”
“Please don’t ever use that combination of words again.”
Her gaze sharpens. “How though?”
“Follow my lead.”
Without waiting, I grab a bewildered Crinkshaw and manhandle him a few steps closer to the malevolent wind sprite, who’s still cackling like a mall Santa three eggnogs past good judgment.
“Holly!” I bellow, pitching my voice toward full theatrical catastrophe. “We can still win this with him,” I jab a finger at Crinkshaw, “as long as Santa doesn’t get to the magic Christmas goblin!”
“I’m a what now?” Crinkshaw asks, deeply unimpressed.
Holly doesn’t miss a beat. Her face shifts instantly—alarm, horror, urgency—all dialed up to a level that suggests she’s missed her true calling on the stage.
“Oh no!” she gasps, clutching her chest. “None of this matters—the tree, the town, not even one strand of its tinsel—if we don’t keep the grotesque Christmas goblin away from Santa.
Please,” she adds, with an escalating desperation that would make a seasoned actor blush, “anything but that. He’s horrible. ”
“I am standing right here,” Crinkshaw says.
Santa stills.
His head tilts, the wind around him stuttering as suspicion gives way to curiosity.
“…I beg your pardon?”
“Oh no,” I say, committing fully now, dragging a hand down my face. “We’re too late.”
And then I shove Crinkshaw forward.
He stumbles straight into the pull of Santa’s magic, coat flapping as his expression settles into a kind of resigned offense.
“I feel I should object to this,” he begins.
Santa’s attention locks.
The pull sharpens.
“Oho,” Santa murmurs, delighted. “And what, exactly, do we have here?”
His hands curl like claws as he reaches out, seizing Crinkshaw by the head with a grip that seems more ceremonial than required. The air thickens, dark magic coiling as Santa pulls deep, inhaling Crinkshaw’s energy like a vampire at an all-you-can-drink buffet.
I don’t actually need to breathe, but I hold my breath anyway.
Holly’s fingers tighten around mine.
For a moment, there’s nothing.
Then Santa drops him.
He hits his knees with a strangled groan, and the storm dies instantly. The wind vanishes. The pressure lifts. Even the fighting falters, as if the entire square has collectively decided to pause and see how this goes.
Crinkshaw, for his part, straightens his coat.
Completely unaffected.
Holly and I tense.
Willow Creek freezes mid-throw—snowballs suspended, cocoa halfway raised—as the town leans in.
Santa sways.
His face tightens in confusion.
Then—horror.
Pure, unadulterated horror.
“What…what is this?” he gasps, clutching at his chest like something inside him has gone profoundly wrong.
I offer him a smile. “You’ve been Crinkshawed.”
A strange, rattling groan escapes him. Not pain, exactly. This is far worse. Meaninglessness. Weariness. The slow creeping certainty that everything is an administrative burden with no clear resolution.
“It’s awful,” Santa wails. “What agony, this life? Are we little more than cosmic motes? What’s the point? What is any of this for?”
Santa’s manic grin twists, falters, and finally collapses under the full weight of Crinkshaw’s Crinkshawness.
It’s not just the emptiness, or even the apathy—it’s the bone-deep weariness of existence without punctuation, the dull ache of eternity stretching on with nothing particularly worth hurrying for.
His face contorts like he’s bitten into a fruitcake laced with despair, and for a moment, it’s clear even he can’t stomach the crushing weight of Crinkshaw’s ennui.
A third wave hits.
Santa’s expression slackens, horror giving way to a void of enthusiasm that only Crinkshaw’s existential dread could create.
For a brief, glorious moment, Crinkshaw’s entire outlook makes perfect, terrible sense. He carries an eternity of dread around with him like it’s a light inconvenience, and now Santa is drowning in it.
Crinkshaw watches him with mild interest, as though this is a perfectly reasonable reaction to being himself.
“Now!” I shout.