Chapter Seventeen December First #2
And if he thinks he can hurt me, then he can probably hurt Artie, too. He can definitely hurt Laurel.
The rage that I’ve been afraid of is swimming through my head, making things hazy. Words stop working.
I see things in images. Me, keeping Blase away from my husband and daughter.
Safe daughter. Safe Artie.
I wrap Laurel in a blanket, kiss her head, and push the crib back into the closet.
I drop a bunch of soft baby books and toys into the crib with her, exit the room, and lock the door behind me, knowing that isn’t going to do a damn thing if someone wants to break it down, but it’s a second I get to keep her safe.
Need my phone. Need help.
I move in the hall, silently.
I choke back a scream, and the air vanishes from me in a silent sob when I see him at the bottom of the stairs.
Black horns are bigger now. The chains wrapped around them are huge and spiked, and they trail down his back and sides. He grins up at me, and frothy drool drips down the long, matted beard. “Ah, schwesterl. Good evening.”
I want to ask what happened. He’s no longer the pretty, polished thing I met in the market. He’s bigger, bulging, and more demonic, snorting, snarling, and leering with eyes that are practically aflame.
“Leave.” My voice shakes. He’s blocking my exit. I can’t get to my phone. Can’t get out. Can’t leap from the second floor with Laurel. Can I?
“With you and the spawn, yes. Is she pink like you? I think I have a fondness for pink.” He puts a huge hoof on the bottom stair.
“Stay!” I warn, an edge of hysteria in my voice.
Blase laughs. “No, no, schwesterl. I am going to take you and the child, or I’m going to slaughter you and the child.
Your choice. But you cannot keep me out when I want in.
You had some witchinglings helping you, yes?
But they are stupid, for they had to leave the house so you and the brat could dwell here.
Go in and out. They kept out evil—but not krampus.
You half-krampus besch?mtenmannskind have been weakening the wards, making it so that the house and town will allow a krampus while trying to keep out evil.
Shoddy spellwork, I suppose. By definition—we are evil.
And you will feel it sooner or later. With me, it will just be sooner. ”
My fingers flex. The thoughts in my head are flashes of sight and sound again, no words.
Those chains. Rip them off. Horns broken. Bloody stumps. Hitting him. Clawing. Screaming.
His screams. Mine.
Because I’ll win. I have a child to fight for. He just has his sick sense of duty.
“Know what?” I snarl, my voice so deep and dark that I don’t recognize it.
Blase stops, hand on the bannister. “Hm?”
“You’re right.”
Then I lunge.
THE DOOR TO MY HOUSE is open.
Immy isn’t outside.
I leave the food in the car and scramble from it.
Failure, failure, failure! You didn’t protect Laurel. You didn’t protect Imogene! Your wife and child could be dead!
My heart is shattering and somehow still beating harder than it’s ever beat before as I fly into the house, phone in my hand. I don’t call 911—I don’t know what the police would even see if they arrived here. I don’t know what human cops would do against monsters. I text the Night Watch group.
One word.
Help.
It was the right word. When I enter the house, I’m immediately confronted by inhuman growling and something black and pink rolling past my feet.
“Immy!” I scream.
My wife looks up at me, her beautiful face covered in something like slime and blood. “Laurel!” she spits with one frantic look up the stairs. I leap over a grotesque and gory mass and take the stairs three at a time, clawing on my hands and knees to get up the last steps.
Laurel’s crying.
I can hear her.
That means she’s alive. That means I can save her. I tell myself that as I jiggle the knob, but can’t get in.
“Fuck it!” I scream and kick the door just next to the knob, putting all of my welterweight body mass behind it. One, two, my knee screams, my foot throbs, wood splinters, and Imogene lets out a scream from below.
I can’t even say anything. Can’t speak. Don’t know if my wife is dying protecting our daughter—and if I hadn’t gone out without them, if I hadn’t wanted to celebrate this night, this wouldn’t be happening.
Or would he have gotten to us more easily, that massive murdering beast reaching in as we parked at the restaurant?
Would he have been trailing us, maybe, watching us somehow?
I picture him grabbing Laurel, clawing open Imogene’s throat, attacking from the passenger’s side, and I’m still.
.. helpless. Can’t move fast enough, even in my dreams.
Horrifying sights are playing in my mind, and even though none of them are real, I can’t turn them off. They all could be real.
I race to Laurel and lift her up, wrapping her in my arms as I look out the window.
A dark figure is racing towards my house. Something with wings flies like a dark missile past my window.
I put Laurel under my coat, yank the nursery lamp out of its place on the small bookcase, and hold it in front of me like a weapon.
I have to get the baby out of here. I have to help Imogene.
I can’t do both without risking Laurel’s life. And if something happened to Laurel... Imogene wouldn’t recover. Neither would I. A dry sob tears out of my chest as I stand frozen at the top of the stairs and look at the bloody streaks on the floor below.
“Can I come in?” A desperate voice shouts from outside.
“Move, Robert, I’ll go!” Another voice insists.
The front door is filled with a dark, charcoal gray figure—a gargoyle with massive wings.
“Come in!” I hiss, and the pale white supermodel-looking type springs in after him.
“Take the baby outside! Go down to our house, Charlotte is waiting!” The vampire shouts, and I remember that Charlotte and Robbie live in the same townhouse development as us, just a few winding streets away.
I start to obey, running out the door, looking back desperately, hating that I can’t help—and stopping when I hear a horrifying crack.
“Oh!” The gargoyle—Genesis, I think his name is—lets out a startled cry.
The sounds of roaring, screaming, and growling stop.
Milo’s big black pickup screeches up alongside my car. “Artie! You okay?” he shouts, flinging open the door.
“Bad krampus,” I point, mouth barely functioning.
“Shit. I came as fast as I could. I was running errands. Anyone who can get here is on their way! Are you two okay?”
I nod. No. I will never be okay again if Imogene doesn’t come out of that house in one piece. Hell, even a bunch of pieces, I don’t care. As long as she’s breathing. And she can forgive me.
I hear a soft voice speaking amid the eerie silence.
Imogene’s steady voice, familiar but different. Deeper. Colder.
“You could beg to be forgiven. Some monsters kill, but then repent. Reform. You don’t have to be evil. You could—”
I push my way past Charlotte’s husband.
“Don’t look—” he tries to stop me, but it’s too late.
Imogene is kneeling on Blase’s thick neck. He’s the size of my fucking car, and Imogene is ragged and bloody, with deep scratches all over her clothes and blood leaking from underneath. On the floor next to her is one huge black horn and a trail of thick, sticky-looking blood.
Blase makes one last attempt, grabbing at Imogene’s neck—and my wife yanks the chain wrapped around his horn and over his neck. There’s a horrifying crack that sounds like a bowling ball being shot into a concrete wall.
Blase is still. Head tilted sideways at a sickening angle. One horn missing, the round stump bleeding into my carpet.
Imogene meets my eyes, the chain in her hands, her face blank. “Baby?” she mouths.
“She’s okay,” I nod, and then sag into Milo’s huge arms.
“He’s dead. I killed him,” Immy whispers—and then she collapses.
I KILLED SOMEONE. I killed a monster.
I’m a monster. I’m a monster who killed a monster. Wait, what does that make me?
I tried to talk to him. After I maimed him. Why didn’t I talk first?
I was too busy forcing myself to breathe. Scream. Sob. Anything, just so I didn’t stop fighting and let him get up those stairs.
Artie is standing with me in the shower, holding me up, kissing my shoulders, begging for my forgiveness. He’s crying, I can feel his body shaking.
Mine is, too.
“Immy, please? Speak to me, baby. I’ll do anything. I’ll never leave your side again. I’m the stupidest asshole in the world, I should have just waited, I should have stayed in the house, I should—”
“You went to get your wife dinner,” I whisper in a hollow voice. “I told you to go. That we’d be fine.” I let out a tiny burst of hysterical laughter. “I’m the stupid one.”
“No! No, Immy, you’re—”
“A killer. I killed someone.”
“Yes! Yes, and I’m so sorry. I couldn’t even help.”
“Help?” I don’t understand. He wants to help me kill things? “You got Laurel out.”
“I should have helped you. You’re hurt, and it’s my fault! I’m the husband, the dad. I should have been fighting for you. Not the other way around.”
“He would have killed you. He almost killed me.” I say the words in a hollow voice, and Artie sobs harder, nodding against my neck.
“You were so badass. Such a hero, and I... I did nothing to protect you.” His hand is trembling when he turns my head, gripping my chin lightly.
The water stings. There are deep claw marks on my chest and arm. A slash against my throat that might have been fatal if my skin wasn’t so thick, if I wasn’t so fast.
Enraged. I hit and clawed with my soft, unclawed fingertips. I bit and kicked. I stomped and kneed. I used the chains to my advantage, grabbing them first and using them to keep Blase in check, using force and leverage to break off his horn—and then snap his neck.
I have welts all over me. Deep grooves in the skin on my hands and forearms from wrapping myself in the chains and fighting against him. The lengths that were still free while I worked to get them around his neck swatted me, bit into my skin like whips.