| |
I glanced over my shoulder at my vamps who stood behind me in the entryway of the house and couldn’t help but lick my lips. “You guys are the best-looking bait I’ve ever seen, but please remember you’re bait, not food.”
Jacek winked. “We’ll try to remember that when Krampus is looking at us the way you are now.”
“He better not look at you like he wants to get nasty with you.” I adjusted the collar of my leather jacket with a smile aimed at the three of them. “I’m now officially jealous of a goat.”
“You don’t have to worry, Sunshine,” Eddie said, smiling. “Krampus isn’t exactly our type.”
“We won’t get eaten as long as you don’t either,” Sawyer assured me.
Did I like the idea of them being bait? Hell no. But if there were seven swans who could capture Krampus, then there needed to be a reason he’d go to them. Food was always a good motivator. It was for me anyway, but if he saw me, the one who’d ridded him of half his tongue, I wasn’t so sure he’d come running after how fast he’d split last night.
I turned back to the front door, able to smell the setting sun outside, and gripped Night’s Fall with both hands. I’d just have to be absolutely certain that nothing happened to my loves tonight.
As soon as the Christmas-Eve sun dipped behind a thick wall of twilight clouds, the four of us stepped outside of the house, me with Night’s Fall at the ready. My seraph knife was sheathed at my thigh, a silver rope lay coiled in my pocket along with a pair of gloves to touch it in case I came across any unfriendly newborn vamps, and a god bone stabbed through my bun, though it was mostly for decoration.
The street stood empty. Sawyer said he’d removed the car from the front yard, and the wrecked cars down the street were gone as well, already hauled away. On top of the inches of ice, quite a bit of snow had fallen, about a nice penis length. If weather people measured the snow in penis lengths like I did, I would actually pay attention to the forecast.
Jacek looked up and down the line of houses, his orange-yellow eyes narrowed against the sharp wind. “I don’t hear any jingle bells. Think he took the night off to nurse his wounds?”
“Doubtful.” Eddie pushed up his glasses. “He’s probably more determined than ever to collect a seventh kid. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”
I stepped off the porch and firmed my lips. “Then we need to stop him before that happens.”
Sawyer strode past me, his feet never sliding once on the snowy sidewalk. “No sign of the devil either.”
“That alone doesn’t feel right,” I said. “That’s not his style to just up and leave like that mid-sentence.”
Jacek nodded as he came up next to me, still searching the street. “He’s definitely the last word type of guy, but not quite like that. And not in the middle of eye fucking the slayer.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him, which he met with a devastating grin.
“We give him the benefit of the doubt because you rejected him. Numerous times,” he added.
Eddie shook his head as his shoes crunched over the snow. “The devil’s like a sad, lost puppy around you.”
“Plus,” Sawyer growled, prowling back toward me with deadly grace, “we know how really, really hard it is not to eye fuck you.”
Jacek angled behind me and grabbed my hip, his hard cock nudging my ass. He nibbled the column of my neck, which turned into hot, wet kisses. “And we know how hard it is not to fuck you.”
A shiver started through me from the power of Jacek’s lips, from the fiery way Sawyer and Eddie were watching. The shiver rolled past my peaked nipples and collected between my thighs in pulsating waves. I almost sagged into Jacek with a moan, pushed him down into the snow, and had my way with him while Eddie and Jacek watched or joined in, but caught myself. I had a job to do. Children were at risk.
“Behave, you three,” I warned. “Our insatiable libidos are going to have to wait.” I thrust Night’s Fall up into the air. “Grab onto me and let’s go.”
Sawyer reached into my open jacket, a dangerous curl on his mouth, and palmed my breast through my thin Pokemon T-shirt, kneading it and thumbing my nipple. Jacek’s lips and tongue were now trailing up my jawline, and Eddie, his mouth twitching, slid his hand up the inner thigh of my jeans toward my aching, wet pussy.
Melting into the three of their touches, I somehow ground out, “Take us to the swans.”
Black wings sprouted from the hilt of the sword, and darkness swallowed us whole. My three vamps disappeared from my side, but I still felt them near. I had the sensation of flying, but nothing stirred around me in this void of nothingness.
Then the void spilled us out onto the snow. My vampires were as graceful as ever and landed flawlessly. I landed on my feet with hardly a stumble, the first time ever.
“Victory is mine!” I pumped my arms into the air, but they only got halfway up when a terrified scream split the night.
It sounded young. Too young.
Shit.
I pressed the hilt of Night’s Fall into Jacek’s hand and then unsheathed my seraph knife as I marched forward to protect my vamps, searching our new surroundings for the source of the scream. It was definitely still Wyoming since the air tasted the same. We stood in what looked like a park. A snow-covered jungle gym was up ahead just to the left, and on the right, a line of swings rocked back and forth in the icy wind. No sign of seven swans. No sign of Krampus or anyone screaming.
“Stay behind me, okay?” I glanced back at my vamps, at their tense, alert stances, and then behind them. Gasping, I spun around, and my mouth hung open.
My vampires followed my lead and stared.
“Some swans don’t swim,” I said.
The swans were arranged in a wide circle, a few inches taller than I was and frozen in stone. The spread of their wings and the position of their long, graceful necks were all different, but their expressions were the same. Their empty gray eyes looked too big for their slender faces, and their beaks were open as if they were in the middle of a squawk. They seemed ruffled and terrified. What had happened to them? It looked like someone had turned them into stone while they stood helpless. But they were the ones who were supposed to turn Krampus to stone.
A jingle bell sounded from somewhere nearby, followed by a yelp.
I whirled, holding the seraph knife so hard that my fingernails carved into my palms, and skated my gaze over the park. It appeared empty, except for several dark splotches over the snow about twenty feet away leading behind a couple trees.
“Okay, guys. Assume your positions and let’s get this done,” I said, stepping closer to the weird splotches. The wind carried a coppery scent just then, and my fangs snicked out. Fresh blood. Human.
My vamps took notice of it, too, with a hungry growl.
“Uh, Sunshine...” Eddie started. “We might have a little problem here, aside from the scent of blood.”
Another scream echoed through the night, this one closer and twisted with horror. A little human-shape bounded out from behind the jungle gym’s tornado slide toward the trees where the splotches led to. Krampus followed soon after, barreling after the kid with a jingle-belled roar.
The kid would never make it.
I sprinted forward, the seraph knife slicing through the air at my side as I pumped my arms and legs faster. “Krampus!”
He didn’t slow. Didn’t even turn.
I poured on more speed, my boots barely having time to sink into the snow.
Krampus raised an arm to swipe at the child.
Almost. There. A strangled cry ripped from my throat. I leaped with the seraph knife raised and arced the blade through the air. It whistled and cut through nothing but emptiness.
Krampus had lunged out of the way, right into the direct path of my still leaping body. I crashed into him with an “oomph!”, and both of us plowed headfirst into a tree trunk. The force of the blow rattled my brain against my skull hard enough to see stars. I slumped to the snow in a pile of mine and Krampus’s limbs and brought my hands to my head. Still attached. Not leaking any brain juices or anything. Good enough.
I rose on unsteady feet, only then realizing that Krampus was already gone. Jingle bells rang in the direction of my vampires, but two other noises drowned it out from behind me. A loud creaking and groaning, and the sound of whimpering dread. I turned. The tree that Krampus and I had memorized with our faces was tipping over, its roots stretching upward from the ground like gnarled fingers. And on the other side, underneath it, in the direct path of the tree’s fall, sat a little girl of about six with a blue-striped hat with a pompom on top, desperately pulling at her leg. She was caught in something.
She was also bleeding freely from the gash in her hand.
I accidentally growled, my fangs, my stomach, my preternatural eyesight all homing in on the gushing blood.
She tore her frightened gaze away from the steadily falling tree behind her, looked at me, and screamed.
Shit. I would probably scream, too, if I saw myself right now.
Behind her scream was a bassy shout. Sawyer. Eddie had said something was wrong, and now they had to deal with Krampus.
Without me, I decided. Shit shit shit.
Sheathing my seraph knife, I rushed to plant myself between the little girl and the falling tree. I couldn’t leave her here to fend for herself. My vampires could handle themselves for a little bit. I hoped.
The girl tried to scramble away from me, which only twisted her leg up even more. I couldn’t even tell what she was caught in.
I squatted and took her face in my hands, the brown curls sneaking out of her hat like silk between my fingers, her body heat a shock to my system. “Stop. Please. I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, though I was pretty sure that was a promise to me more than her.
I wasn’t a newborn vampire anymore, but I hadn’t surrounded myself with a lot of bleeding humans lately either. Bloodlust warred with every movement I needed to accomplish before I made it back to my vampires.
One of the tree’s branches snagged the girl’s hat and flopped it against her pudgy cheek. Her big brown eyes filled with tears as she said, “Promise you won’t hurt me?”
My dead heart broke into tiny pieces and then froze, instantly, at the loud cracks and groans of the tree behind me. Frantic, I clawed at the snow around her trapped foot and hit something hard. An overturned cinderblock frozen to the concrete path below it. Her foot had twisted itself into the hole inside the cinderblock.
Ice-covered branches formed a cage around us, some of which snapped like bones. The tree groaned again, a constant, horrendous noise. I rose up slightly as if to catch the trunk with my back, but it was a huge fucking tree.
I pulled on the girl’s foot, but when she cried out and grabbed hold of my jacket, I quickly switched to Plan B. I wrapped my hands around the cinder block and wrenched it free from the icy ground. So she’d have a cinderblock foot now. It was better than being squished.
The tree leaned hard against my back, grinding against every vertebrae of my spine. Bent over as I was, I dug my toes into the snow and slid them wider to spread out the weight of the tree, just long enough to scoop the girl up in my arms and get the hell out of there. I shielded her face and body the best I could as we smashed through the branches caging us in. As soon as we cleared them, the tree crashed down.
I ran toward the swans and my vampires and Krampus, the little girl clutched tight in my arms. Her cinderblock foot slammed into my upper thigh. Her pompom hat went flying. Her blood-drenched hand weaved through the hair of my fallen bun, so close I could taste the sweet coppery goodness. Her warm neck was just inches away from my mouth—
Stop it. My thirst was the least of my worries, or it should’ve been, at least. My stomach needed to learn that lesson fast.
Once I rounded the jungle gym, I spotted the swans. But no vampires or Krampus.
“Sawyer? Jacek? Eddie?” I shouted.
Nothing.
Nothing except two familiar silhouettes across the street, standing on top of what looked like a post office. Eddie and Jacek. They blurred down the side of it faster than Spiderman and stopped to haul up something on the sidewalk. Where were Sawyer and Krampus?
I rushed toward them, cradling the girl’s head in my palm to keep her from baring her neck.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Home. Soon.” The words came out like a growl that made her whimper, and I instantly hated myself even more for not being able to control myself.
The thing Eddie and Jacek were dragging into an upright position was huge compared to them, and hunched over. Then the figure stood and eyed me over their shoulders with a head full of silky black curls blowing in the wind and a pained scowl on his lips.
Sawyer. He was hurt.
I sprinted toward them, put the kid down, and then pressed my hands to my favorite Brazilian vampire’s face. “Are you okay?”
“My knee went to battle with Krampus’s goat foot.” He took my hands and squeezed, a small smile dashing across his scowl. “I’ll be fine, but Krampus won’t be next time we see him.”
“Where is he?” I asked, searching the street.
“We chased him...off.”
I turned to Jacek beside me to see why he’d trailed off, and found his amber gaze stuck to Eddie on my other side. The little girl gazed up at him with her warm brown eyes, her soft curls, now free from her hat, twirling around her angelic face, and reached up to hook her pinkie in his.
“Hi,” she whispered. “I’m Francisca.”
Eddie winced and looked away from her, every emotion he’d ever felt at war on his face. My eyes filled with tears because I could name every one of them—regret, loss, heartache, love. Eddie’s little sister, who’d also been a slayer, had died, and Eddie, being Eddie, had worn the big-brother badge with pride and fierce protectiveness. This little girl obviously sensed that.
I caught his eye and nodded, as if giving him permission to feel everything he was feeling, and to take on the role the little girl wanted him to. Since she’d looked away from me, she’d already forgotten about me since that was how it worked with humans and vampires. But she hadn’t forgotten about him as she gazed up at him with admiration. I knew how she felt.
He flicked his eyes to her—not red like I was sure mine were since he was better at controlling his thirst—and smiled down at her, tightening his pinky with hers.
“Hi,” he said. “Let’s get that cinderblock off your foot and get you home, all right?”
She nodded and flashed him an almost toothless grin that wobbled one out from me as well. Apparently no female of any age was safe with their hearts around Eddie.
I steeled my spine again and tried to pretend I hadn’t just melted into a puddle. “So. Those swans didn’t work?”
“Funny thing about those seven swans...” Jacek came up to me with Night’s Fall pointed at the snow and brushed my wet cheeks with his thumb, a sweet smile on his lips. “There’s only six of them.”