2

I’ve just settled myself and two fine-looking women into a booth at the Cornflower & Crane and ordered three tankards of barrel-aged beer when I hear it—a damned bell reverberating through my brain.

It’s insistent, demanding a response. At the same moment, a scroll unfurls about an arm’s length in front of my face, invisible to everyone except me. The scroll is a missive from Nocturis, my overseer in the ranks of the Wild Hunt. Usually the message carries a location, a full-color image of my intended victim’s face, a list of their sins, and the assigned punishment.

This time, the scroll shows me a map of the town where I left the girl, the surviving victim from the cabin. A red dot glows briefly to mark the location, an alleyway. Then the scroll vanishes from my sight.

“Fuck,” I growl.

“What’s the matter?” purrs the olive-skinned woman to my right, petting my chest. “Relax, love. You’re with Lotte and Bettina.”

The rosy, curvy blonde on my left coos in agreement. I was looking forward to watching their pretty mouths travel up and down the sides of my dick as they worked on me in unison until I splattered their faces with my release. Alas, that is not to be.

“Excuse me, ladies.” I shoo Lotte out of the booth and shove my way through the milling crowd of revelers in the Cornflower & Crane. I can’t ignore the summons. The change will come upon me within a handful of minutes, whether I’m ready or not.

This is wrong. I’m never called twice in such close succession. There’s always a respite of a day or two, sometimes longer. I’ve already meted out justice tonight… though it was perhaps the strangest scenario I’ve encountered so far. I shouldn’t have to answer the call again. But the ringing in my brain is growing louder.

I’m running out of time.

I burst out of the tavern into the cold air and run for the nearest copse of trees. I’ve barely reached its shelter when my body surges and expands into the hulking, broad-shouldered, goat-legged form of my other self, the Fae demon called Krampus. Black fur cloaks my lower body, and black horns emerge from my skull. My cape and my bone mask settle onto my frame, their weight as familiar as the heft of the huge bag that appears over my shoulder.

Chains rattle when I move, and the bells tucked among my garments clink faintly, unable to ring out unless they’re held by a child in pain .

I seethe as I draw the flame-circle around myself and prepare for transport by geistfyre. It’s a kind of travel permitted to only a few of the Fae, specifically those like myself who operate under the purview of the Wild Hunt. I don’t ride with that majestic band, firstly because, although I’m immortal, I’m not dead—and secondly because the crime that doomed me to this existence was not against my fellow Fae, but against humans. The Fae have a long history of using and mistreating humans, but my sins were of such a shocking and egregious nature that I drew the attention—and the anger—of the god-stars. They doomed me to an existence of being forever summoned by bells in the hands of desperate children.

For many riders, their service to the Wild Hunt has a limit, an end. A final task or challenge, which, if they complete it successfully, results in them receiving corporeal form again, along with a span of years. If they fail the Final Task, they are annihilated. But not all members of the Hunt receive such an opportunity. For me, there is no foreseeable end, no reward I can anticipate. Nothing to hope for.

When I’m summoned, I may only travel to the location I’ve been given. Between tasks, however, I can transport myself anywhere I like, simply by summoning my chains and using them to conjure geistfyre.

Once the geistfyre circle is complete, the transfer is immediate, and I find myself standing between the brick walls of an alley. My breath issues in white puffs from beneath the bone mask. The musty smell of mold and rat droppings is barely distinguishable through the stark cold.

I’m never summoned without a target—a face, a name. This time, all I have is a location. There’s a lump of something near the mouth of the alley, so I trudge toward it, sniffing, filtering out the wood smoke, the rat shit, the frosty scent of impending snow—

Her scent hits me, and I stop short .

As I feared, it’s her again. The pale slip of a girl with the long brown braids and the giant dark eyes—the one from the cabin. The one I dropped off at the outskirts of town not three hours ago. And now here she is, nearly frozen to death by the look of her. Stupid human—did she not have the sense to ask for shelter and warmth?

She’s wearing a cloak and shoes, and some food lies on a plate nearby. Someone gave her those things… or perhaps she stole them.

One of my bells lies near the curved tips of her blue-tinged fingers. She must have snatched the bell off me and rung it out of desperation.

But why did the bell work for her? By her scent, she’s around two decades old—too old to summon me. Yet here I am.

I look up at the strip of clouded night I can see above the alley. “Nocturis, what are you up to?” As my superior within the Wild Hunt, Nocturis has some control over my missions. The ultimate authority, though, resides in the hands of the great god-star Andregh, champion of justice and balance, patron of the Hunt.

No one from the Hunt has contacted me directly in ages, although I still receive assignments. I don’t know if this girl’s ability to ring the Krampus bells is a mistake or intentional. Perhaps I’m meant to save her life, though I can’t imagine why.

I bend, carefully sliding my clawed hands under her body and lifting her. With the extra strength I possess in this form, her weight is nothing. Feather-light.

I drape her over my shoulder so I can summon a chain and draw the geistfyre circle. She quivers suddenly, then begins to flail with panic.

“No,” she gasps. “No, not you …”

Her half-frozen limbs flutter against my powerful bulk. I ignore her, finish the circle, and transfer us back to my house. She’ll have to reside here until I can figure out an alternative. Hopefully my housemates won’t eat her. Though if they do, I suppose it would solve the problem.

I always appear in the ballroom when I transport home. The moment I set the girl down, she scuttles away from me, shivering so hard she can’t speak. I can’t have her hiding in the pile of old furniture again, like a little worm in a potato—she might die in there, and then rot, and I’d have to live with the smell because it would be far too great a bother to drag out each piece of furniture until I finally uncovered her corpse.

So I grab her ankle and drag her back toward me before she can crawl farther away.

She screams faintly, kicking at my hand with her icy bare foot, since both her shoes apparently fell off while I was carrying her. She kicks at the wrong angle, slicing the bottom of her foot on one of my claws. Blood flecks the floor.

I can’t have her escaping and getting lost or eaten, nor can I let her keep hurting herself, so I unsling my bag with my free hand and shake it open. The mouth of the bag widens, prepared to swallow and preserve whatever I stuff inside it.

Clumsily, trying not to scratch her with my claws, I attempt to stuff the girl into the sack. She writhes, screams, and kicks, but I have more than my share of Fae strength in this form, so I manage to get her inside. I cinch the top of the bag and step back, while her small feet, knees, and fists hammer against the inside of the sack, distorting its shape slightly. She’s a feathered bird in a snare, who doesn’t yet realize her struggle is useless.

“Hush, girl,” I order, and the bag stops moving for only a moment before she continues to fight.

With a shrug I lift her onto my back, then carry her down the hall and up the stairs to my room. It’s the only safe place in this house. Besides which, there’s always a fire burning in my chamber, and she needs heat.

On the way to my room, my usual form returns. I retain the mask, cloak, and bag for now. They appear whenever I’m summoned, and I can keep them as long as I need to and dispel them whenever I’m ready to do so.

Once we’re inside my room, I close the door. It’s not bolted, but my chambers are marked with sigils invisible to the human eye, designed to foil my housemates if they decide we’re no longer allies and I’d be the perfect snack. In my Krampus form, they usually give me a wide berth, but they’ve made it known how delicious I smell in my regular Fae form. The beasts and I have maintained an uneasy truce for centuries. They don’t devour me, as long as I keep them fed.

I open the bag and dump the partly-frozen human onto the hearth rug. She’s shaking uncontrollably, her teeth are chattering, and there’s blood at the corner of her mouth. She probably bit her tongue.

That scarlet gleam sends a greedy buzz through my brain. Her blood smells hot, rich, and salty-sweet.

Still draped in the cloak, wearing my mask, I sink to my knees beside her.

Blood is part of my work, a commonplace substance, and I don’t typically desire it like most Unseelie Fae do. But this blood… it’s like a well-marbled beefsteak when you’re used to bland fillets of fish. It’s irresistible.

The girl’s pupils are huge, her lips tinted faintly blue. She’s breathing rapidly, shallowly, unable to do more than tremble as I unfurl my long tongue and flick it through the blood at the corner of her mouth.

That tiny taste zings through my nervous system like lightning. I groan, dazzled by the flavor—and yet there’s an aftertaste I don’t like. A faint yet unmistakable marker in the blood, proof that her body is going into a shocked state which could end in death.

I need to get her warm, and fast .

Throughout my centuries, I’ve picked up plenty of information about humans, including the fact that when one is deathly cold, skin-to-skin contact is the best way to restore heat.

I slice off the girl’s cloak and nightdress with my claws, leaving her panties intact. Her chest is constricted by a band of cloth, wound in tight layers, and I cut through it so she can breathe better. She whimpers and covers her chest with her arms while her breath grows even faster and shallower.

“Not going to hurt you,” I mutter. I take off my cape, lie down on the hearth-rug, and drag her shivering form against my bare body. Then I envelop us both with the great ragged cloak. It’s layered, and heavy. It will trap the heat well.

She sobs at first, horrible hitching gasps of terror, but when I don’t move for several minutes she begins to settle, to breathe slower. The compulsive shaking eases as warmth flows from my body into hers.

I’d planned for this night to end very differently, in a distant town, in a different room, with two naked beauties curled up on either side of me. This waif might be nearly naked, and she might have delicious blood, but beyond that, she doesn’t appeal to me at all. She’s a lost scrap of humanity. An anomaly in the endless nightmare of my life.

A feather on the winds of Fate.