Page 20 of The Krampus' Queen
Boldly, I rush for the exit, my bare feet slapping into the ground. There’s no disguising that I’m trying to flee.
He doesn’t move.
No. I’m not running away like this. Not with my tail tucked between my legs. I didn’t do anything wrong. He did.
Lifting my chin, I keep one eye on the exit, while the other burns into him. “I know.”
The stirring stops. “You know what?”
This is the stupidest fucking thing you’ve done since you opened your babysitting app on Christmas Eve.
Bracing myself, I declare, “I know about the children.”
CHAPTER 10
FROM HIS DROPPED hands there arose such a clatter, I brace to be disemboweled and splattered.
His eyes blaze red, steam puncturing through the air. The tips of his horns glow like blazing coals. I dig my fingers into the wall, prepared to launch myself back for his attack. His head drops. Shoulders slump.
Wiping the red juice off of his fingers, he walks toward me. The brazen fool who challenged him is gone, leaving me in a panic. I flatten to the wall, twisting my cheek to the side, and he breezes on past. “Follow me,” are his only rumbling words.
I look up to the knife block hanging a good ten feet in the air. There’s no hope I can grab one to protect myself.
“Well?” His voice booms down the hallway.
I skitter on my feet, giving chase like I want an answer. I do, I just…also want to go back to before I found out he keeps children in death tunnels below his castle. Krampus leads us back into the room with the doors—one to a human popsicle death, the other to freedom. He’s blocking both by standing dead center.
Knowing he’ll be heading to the throne room, I ease my way to the other arch, but he’s still standing there. Frozen. As still as the morning’s dawn after a blizzard.
“You know the tale of Santa Claus? He rewards the good children with toys and candy?” A red eye catches me, slamming my feet to the floor. I gulp and nod. Everyone knows that.
Krampus parts his hands and a gnarled stick grows between them. The wood is blackened from fire and words or runes carved all across it reveal white bark below. As he holds the seven-foot-tall branch, he pulls up his hood, his features vanishing into the darkness. I reach up to do the same with my robe when he smashes the end of his stick to the ground.
The words light up fire red. Texts form in the air from right to left before leaping down to the ground under the staff. When they land, they embed into the stone itself. As the final words hit, a grinding noise echoes from below and the floor opens. I yelp, the bottom of the robe sucking under the sliding floor. Holding it tight, I rush away from the rising hole just as a staircase forms below my feet. It goes so fast, I don’t have a chance to balance myself.
My foot slips below me and I pitch forward into darkness. An arm curls under my stomach, catching me. It doesn’t stop, carrying me up to stand beside him. He pulls the staff from the ground, then descends down the staircase.
Hooves echo on the black marble as he calls out, “And the Krampus punishes the wicked.”
“Wicked what?” I chase after him. As we go down, a halo of light rises around us like invisible candles. “Children? Children can’t be wicked. They’re…” I can’t think. The air grows heavy the deeper we descend the twisting stairs.There’s this thing where people aren’t born bad. It’s fancy, like a spell.“Tabula rosa!” I cry out.
“What?” His determined wizard walk freezes, and he looks over his shoulder. The twin red flames flickering under the hood do not calm my nerves.
“It means blank slate.”
“Yes, I understand that part. What does that have to do with children?”
“It means we’re all nothing when we start. Good, bad. Children can’t be wicked just…naughty.”
He stands away from me, his staff high. “Is that so?”
A handful of jobs where I’d vowed to knot my ovaries around a cannonball and shoot them out of my vagina come back to bite me in the ass. “Very naughty, sure. Very, very naughty, but wicked?” That sounded too far for a bunch of grade schoolers.
The air heats up as we go, boiling me under his robe. I fan my hands in front of my face but the pitiful breeze doesn’t help, so I reach to pull off the hood. He catches my wrist, stopping me.
With a slow shake of his head, he raises his staff and points. Small orbs of light come to life. They bob as if they’re hanging off of the ceiling, but I can’t see any wires. One by one, they lead toward a cave of the same black rock, but this isn’t finished and polished to a shine. It’s jagged and ashen.
The lights stop on a wall of sheer black. Still holding my hand, Krampus walks us toward the wall. My reflection stares back at me, bags under my eyes, bruises and claw marks rising across my chest and up my throat. I look like death warmed over. Getting nervous, I reach up to try and smooth back my eyebrows.
