We all gaped collectively as the portal shot to life once more. We were all moving before anything else could happen. Baumbel tossed Ded over his shoulder, hooking an arm under Shnikel to help him walk, and I grabbed up the pelts to follow.
I didn’t give this world so much as a backwards glance as we shot through the portal.
Adios, bitchachos! So long, candy cane assholes!
Chapter 19
Ded was looking mighty confused when his eyes slid open to find me munching on a weird berry fruit thing. The fruit was not poisonous here, at least not that we’d found.
“Hungry?” I asked my companion, shaking my jacket a little to offer him a peek at the girls.
“This one,” Shnik was saying as Baumb nodded and began to dig an enormous hole beneath a large tree that grew the fruit I was eating. It tasted like meat, sweet, a little salty. I liked it. And I hadn’t vomited or died yet. Human anatomy differing from Krampus or Baumbel, they’d both tried the fruit first hours before I was allowed. Ded had gone and had himself a long assed fruit induced nap that had absolutely nothing to do with Baumb’s stunned stupid reaction to our new digs he mighta maybe lost his grip and dropped my poor Krampus male on his head. Pulling another segment of fruit free, I tossed it to Yule, who was content to lick the flesh from Bels’ severed skull but lifted her head to catch the treat all the same.
“That’s going to be our den. Cozy, right?” I said conversationally.
Ded just blinked and blinked some more, staring at the forest surrounding us dazedly.
“I think it’s kinda pretty,” I commented, lifting a clawed finger to jerk it towards the canopy of branches heavy with fruit overhead.
Ded’s gaze focused on the fur starting to sprout up along my hand and the claws for fingernails on my fingertips.
“See,” I said with a sharp toothed grin, “it’s kinda a long story, but you don’t mind a gal who’s a lil’ hairy and may tend to get growly from time to time, do ya?”
“Lumi,” Ded garbled out, like I’d just said the sexiest thing ever.
Baumb let out a sound that said he agreed, and Shnikel glanced up, his face already gone white with Krampus fur, and that male purred.
A shiver raced up my spine and I purred back in answer. Bright blue eyes flashed, Shnikel’s and Ded’s, at their female’s chest rumble.
“Oop, where’d that come from?” Patting my chest, I chuckled.
As Baumb’s churring purr started up and they stalked over to where Ded and I were lounging, I supposed our den would just have to wait a little longer.
Chapter 20
Somewhere in Hinter
Turbulent blues stared sightlessly into the fire. The pile of heads smoking over the yule logs brought him no great pleasure. His boots and coat lay discarded on the floor, the wicker basket he’d carted back here bloodied and sat near the door. An Elf would take care of it.
“There can be no light without the dark, dear.” The disembodied voice came to him. It always did this night. His Lyddie, Lydia, had been gone to him for some years now. He’d do anything to get her back. Pulling two small, glowing orbs from his sack, he twirled them in one hand. Hope filled him for the first time in so long he couldn’t remember. There could only be one maiden in Hinter at a time. The balance had to be kept. When Alfka and Lyddie had taken their Kraumpensuss forms to choose who was to stay and who was to leave these lands, Lydia the victor, he never could have imagined his Lyddie would later succumb to her wounds.
Without balance to be kept, the curse of the Krampus had run wild. His sweet, unassuming Elkfen had gone naughty, with no help from his Elves. Some of those Christmas imps had gone positively dark while he’d given in to his sadness and locked himself away in his tower.
“And no dark without the light, I know…” he answered the ghost of his one true love. It just never got any easier, keeping the balance so the magic that held Hinter stayed strong. He was forced to do things, sacrifices were to be made. This wasn’t like when his soulmate was here. He was drowning without the other half of his soul, the urge to stay Krampen stronger and stronger every year.
His hands stopped twirling the small blue, glass looking orbs. “I’ve a gift for you, my heart.” Lifting one up, he held it out to the smoky visage of his white haired lover, his little Christmas witch. The vision before him twitched and flickered, blinking in and out. It grew worse and worse as the years passed. Soon she’d be nothing more than wisps of a memory. He was dying without her. He was giving in to the madness threatening to consume him without her to offer balance. She’d pulled him from the mountain caves so many eons ago and shown him another way, and offered up a half of her humanity to him in exchange for this world they’d built. He’d never looked back.
All it would really take was one, he thought, eyeing the orb he held out to his love, but what he’d offered Lumi in exchange for her latent magical abilities had given Lumi not only her male back, but the one thing his dearest Lyddie had never been able to attain—the compatibility to bear young with her mate. Krampus did not breed, born sterile. They were created from the fires of their own darkness and only the light could draw them out. Snowmaidens were the light to the Krampussen’s dark.
With Hinter being preternaturally good and all that was right, it was no surprise to learn his Elkfen, created in the image of his female, would so easily fall with the smallest transgressions.
The Elves, Klaus thought darkly, those Loki-like nuisances were all his doing, his immortal henchmen.
Tossing the orb high up into the air as he tucked the second one back into his pocket to be locked up for safe keeping, should his Lydia ever need it again, he turned, offering her his back and the coat discarded on the floor to preserve her modesty, and turned to face the next task at hand.
Fingers steepling, his thick pinkies pressing into his long, fluffy beard, he faced the fireplace in the large, circular room roaring with gold flames.
The cocoa on the table near his throne of a chair had long ago gone cold. Lydia, popping back into existence and with her that feeling of peace she gave him, his coat rustled as she put it on. With a happy sigh, she came up behind him, leaned around his chair and pressed a sweet kiss to the side of his head. A happy rumble of a purr left him.
“Forever, my light,” he whispered, closing his eyes to lean into her touch as her hand stroked his face. The rest of his person immediately responded. She did that to him, lit up his world from the inside out. Her name, etched into his flesh on his thick neck, tingled as if she were caressing the marks.
“Always, my heart,” she purred right back. Taking his cup of cold cocoa, she toddled off, generous hips swaying as she went, a Christmas tune humming from her throat, to refill it. He was going to get thick in the middle again with her at the helm. A slow smile spread across his face as he turned to watch her go. He couldn’t wait.
The gold flamed fire with bells jingling along the wreath over its mantle crackled and sparked. Sitting back in a relaxed pose, he waited. Bels rematerialized as if he’d never gone.
Klausen’d watched him closely this time, mentally tracking the naughty male. He’d been up to something, he’d sensed it the moment Hinter rippled with awareness of a Snowmaiden within its bounds. He’d assumed it had meant his clever mate had found a way to regenerate herself. The stupid Elf didn’t know what he was doing, but Klaus’ Lyddie couldn’t have come back to him with Lumi in residence. The half breed descendant had no place here. Klaus was only too happy to help her go. Shnikel wouldn't have been allowed back into the fold of his herd for subterfuge otherwise. Nothing went on in Hinter that he wasn’t made aware of. Nothing. Like the naughty Elf causing ripples in Hinter’s very fabric right before him.