9

Years ago, when I had my first bleeding, I stared at the stain on my sheets for several minutes. I investigated the source and determined that the bleeding was ongoing. Then I took the soiled sheets to Mother and quietly told her that I was going to die.

I had considered and accepted my death within the span of several minutes. When Mother explained what was really happening, I felt a faint sort of relief, threaded with a secret disappointment, because death would have meant an end to the strain of playing my part for my captor.

I still miss that Mother sometimes. The way she listened. The way she didn’t just survive, but made things better for the rest of us, even him . I remember he used to put his head in her lap. I remember the tragedy in her eyes as she stroked his hair.

I remember the night he killed her. I remember how hard it was to pretend she didn’t matter to me.

Every time he killed a Wife or a Mother and brought a new one into the cabin, I accepted the change calmly. No outward sign of grief or loss. No visible divergence in my routine, except to give the new resident a little extra help until she adapted. Until she learned what was expected of us.

Perhaps that’s why I accept my bond with the house so quickly. The connection simply exists. There’s no reason to flail and fret about it. I have questions, of course—about the house, about myself—but there’s no one I can ask. Krampus has made himself scarce ever since he confessed his great sin to me. Perhaps that conversation made him feel vulnerable. I suspect he doesn’t like feeling fragile any more than I do.

If I asked him, he might tell me more about the house. But he knows nothing about me, so it’s no use worrying and wondering where I came from, or why I can form connections with the buildings in which I reside.

Whether I understand it or not, I’m linked to this house, a stronger bond than my link with the cabin. When I’m working quietly in the rooms, I feel a current racing through my veins, energizing my limbs. I sense the interest and enthusiasm of the house, its pleasure and pride when I finish cleaning another area.

The Imp follows me around some days, helping out by eating copious amounts of clutter and debris. He’ll devour almost anything as long as I set it on fire first. Fortunately, if he sets anything alight that isn’t supposed to burn, he can swallow the flames and snuff it out before it spreads.

I enjoy having his company, almost as much as I enjoy transforming the house from an abandoned wreck into a livable place. Whatever clutter and spare furniture the Imp won’t eat, I’ve been moving into the big gray room, until I can figure out what to do with it. But I make sure to leave space for Krampus to return in his fiery circle, and I leave him a wide path to the stairway that leads below. I avoid that stairway. It’s where he takes his victims, and I’d rather not see that part of the house.

The other monsters lurk near me sometimes, in dark corners, behind walls, on ceilings, or beneath the floorboards. Mostly I ignore them, or quietly move to a different room. If they become aggressive, the house interferes, rerouting either them or me.

Even after two weeks, I’ve only touched a fraction of the rooms in this place. An awareness has developed in my mind, a sense of the house’s vastness, its age, and its will. It likes me, but it doesn’t trust me yet. It’s keeping some things hidden. There are certain rooms it’s not ready to let me access.

The secrecy doesn’t bother me. Earning trust, being patient, and sensing the moods of others is what I’m good at. I can wait. Eventually, the house will open itself fully to me.

Krampus is another matter. He seems to prefer a separate life from mine, so I accommodate him. When he returns, I sense it through my connection to the house, and I do my best to meet his needs unobtrusively.

He knows I’m still here, still alive. Sometimes he brings me gifts of food, the most delicious meals I’ve ever eaten, in larger portions than I’m used to. He fluffs the pillows and smooths the sheets when he leaves the bed, so they’ll be fresh and ready for me. I’m growing accustomed to the winter-midnight scent of him, like a path I can follow to peace and rest, a familiar fragrance that helps me relax and sink into sleep.

On the fourteenth day since I left the cabin, Krampus returns with a crash and a roar that shakes the house. I drop my broom, and the Imp frantically scurries up the chimney in the spare room we’re cleaning.

Without thinking, I run out of the room and race toward the source of the sound. Krampus is always loud, but never like this .

The flames of his fire-circle are flickering and dying around his huge cloaked body, which lies on its side in the gray room. His sack is abandoned near him. It’s bigger than he is, stuffed full of bodies, and it’s still moving. Muffled roars and male screams penetrate the heavy, blood-saturated fabric.

As I approach, Krampus flings up his horned head and snarls at me, fangs flashing and tongue writhing beneath the goat-skull mask. His tongue is horribly wounded, sliced halfway through, hanging on by threads of flesh. The dark fur around his cloven hooves is soaked and matted with blood. Someone has cut off the tufted end of his tail.

I reach for his mask, and he gives a guttural, anguished roar. Blood paints one of the eyeholes, and as I lift the mask free, I notice that his left eye is a ruined mess, while the other one is dead black with a scarlet pupil. Most of his face is coated with blood.

He’s panting, his wounded tongue spilling from his jaws onto the floor.

“Gods, what happened to you?” I murmur, tentatively reaching toward it.

“Careful,” he slurs. “My tongue—paralytic toxin.”

“Will you heal?” I ask.

“Slowly… if at all.” Each word is a torment for him. “They had… iron weapons.”

I might not be very familiar with the Fae, but I know that iron is harmful to them. “So the men you were after—they knew Krampus would come for them, and they suspected he might be Fae. It was a trap.”

He doesn’t answer. His chest heaves, and I don’t like the wet sound of his labored breaths.

With all my might I push him over onto his back. The bells sewn into his cape jingle faintly .

I fumble with the layers of heavy fabric and fur until my fingers touch hard muscle slicked with blood. He’s badly wounded somewhere underneath.

I’ve seen wounds. And I’ve assisted with the care and binding of injuries after a Mother or a Wife was beaten. Hell, I’ve tended my own wounds more times than I can count.

I can do this.

I keep pulling at the cape, but I can’t find an opening, only the short slit where an iron blade cut through. The material is too heavily layered and too thick for me to rip with my bare hands.

“I have to get this cape off you so I can tend your wounds,” I tell him. “I’m going to fetch a knife.”

“I can… dispel the cape,” he gasps. But his face contorts horribly, and he cries out in pain.

“Whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working, and it’s hurting you,” I exclaim. “Stop it.” Glancing over my shoulder, I catch sight of the Imp lurking in the doorway. “Go to the kitchen and fetch me a big knife,” I tell him.

With a blink of his enormous eyes, the Imp races off.

Krampus groans. In this form, his voice is so deep and monstrous that I shiver.

“Easy.” My tone is calmer than I feel. “You won’t die from this. You just have to wait until things get better.”

It’s something I told myself over and over in the cabin. You won’t die from this. You just have to wait until things get better.

A thump seizes my attention, and when I glance at the sack, its cinched mouth is widening. A fist thrusts out, followed by another groping hand.

The humans Krampus captured are emerging. Which is bad news for me, since he judges the most brutal and heartless kind of people—those who are cruel to children.

I have no weapons, and even if I did, I don’t know how to fight. Krampus is in no shape to defend himself or me .

The first man emerges from the sack with a malevolent howl of rage. He’s bloodied, bruised, furious. Another man follows, dragging the third man, who seems to be immobilized, probably from Krampus’s tongue. A fourth man crawls out, feeling absently around a large wound in his skull. He won’t live long. I’ve seen a head injury like that before.

The first two men stand up, seething. They spot me at once.

“Come here, little girl,” hisses one of them. He lunges toward me, but I’m too quick. I bound away from Krampus’s side and dive into the piles of furniture. This room is a wilderness of tables, chests, and chair legs, and I’m the ferret slender enough to slip through the crevices.

“Get her,” snarls the man. “I’ll finish off this one.” He starts toward Krampus.

“Watch the tongue,” warns his companion.

I’m already far inside the tangle of furniture, crouched under a table. I slam both hands to the floor, the centers of my palms heating with sudden energy as I feel the power thrumming through the house.

This room is too clogged with objects for the house to help us. There’s no space for its energy to flow, not enough air for it to work with.

“Bring the monsters to me,” I murmur to the house. “The one that hides in the shadows, and the one in the walls. Guide them here quickly, or Krampus dies. If he dies, I’ll die, and there will be no one left to care for you.”

The floor quakes and the walls shudder as the house responds. The trembling of the structure is violent enough that both ruffians look up.

“A fucking earthquake?” exclaims one.

The other starts a long string of curses as he heaves aside piece after piece of furniture, making his way toward me.

“Come here, girl, and I’ll take it easy on you,” he offers .

I stare at him from under my table, then slither deeper into the debris.

“That’s how you’re going to play it?” he spits. “Fine. I’ll tear your little cunt apart, I swear.”

“I can’t choke this bastard without getting hit by his tongue,” calls the other ruffian. “His neck’s too thick anyway. What should I do?”

“Grab something and bludgeon him,” replies the ruffian pursuing me. “Do it quick. I’m about to catch us a pretty little maid.”

I climb onto a dresser and stand there, surveying the room. Waiting, while the man struggles toward me.

A cracking, splintering sound draws my attention upward to the shadowed ceiling. Claws scrape and scrabble, and there’s a whooshing sound, like a tail whipping through the dark. That’s the lurking beast, the one I haven’t yet seen clearly. A word presses into my mind—both shape and sound, lent to me by the house’s consciousness. Bahkauv.

At the same moment, clomping steps sound in the hall, and four long legs appear in the doorway. An antlered rabbit’s head with giant yellow teeth and red eyes lowers itself below the lintel and peers into the room. Its small raccoon hands grope the air.

This one I know. Wolpertinger.

The man with the head injury screams.

At his shriek, the creature on the ceiling drops with a crash onto a pile of furniture, fully visible for the first time. And I almost scream, too.

Its form looks similar to a large, hairless, deformed calf. The head and nose are bovine, but the skin is like a seal’s, taut and gray. A tapered tail, like a lizard’s but without scales, wraps around a chair leg. The creature’s front legs are muscular, similar to a panther’s, but with elbow spikes and three massive toes that end in fat, ridged claws. It opens its mouth and bawls, its voice calf-like but wretched, hollow, mad with hunger .

Wolpertinger howls in answer and hunches down, fitting itself through the doorway and entering the room. Krampus’s unmoving form lies between the monster and the men, and Wolpertinger lowers its rabbit head toward him, sniffing the blood seeping from beneath his cape. Its teeth chatter eagerly, and then its maw opens to bite.

“No!” I cry out.

Wolpertinger’s head whips up. Its neck is uncannily long and flexible, and I have to stifle the frightened wail that wants to escape my throat. But I know how to steel my legs so they don’t wobble. I know how to pretend I’m not afraid for my life.

“No,” I repeat loudly, staring into Wolpertinger’s red eyes. Then I turn and give the Bahkauv a firm stare as well. “Do not touch Krampus. Eat them . Those men.” I point to the ruffians who came out of the sack.

The two monsters pounce with horrifying swiftness. One of the men makes a break for the stairs, and I don’t warn him about the Meerwunder below. He’ll find out soon enough.

The Imp appears at the door, holding a butcher knife. I climb through the furniture toward him, trying not to listen to the crunching, slurping, and shrieking as the monsters feast on their victims.

The screams don’t last long.

Untangling myself from the last of the clutter, I grab the knife from the Imp, who bounds off to join the carnage. I lift Krampus’s cape and saw through the layers of fabric until I can part them and see his chest.

He’s bigger in this form, with thick veins snaking over his bulging muscles. His sinewy neck, huge pectorals, and packed abdominals promise brute strength, and yet he’s weak, nearly unconscious, his one good eye quivering half-open. Two large gashes cleave his chest and stomach. The edges of the wounds look burned, as if the iron blade seared going in and out. And yet he bleeds .

“Tell me how to help you,” I murmur.

His lips twitch back over his fangs. “Your blood.”

“My…” I gulp down a surge of panic. “My blood?”

“Human blood… can help.”

Human blood… does it have to be mine? I glance at the leftovers of the ruffians and immediately wish I hadn’t. I choke down a retch as bile surges in my throat.

Krampus notices when I glance at the dead men. “ Your blood,” he whispers. As if it makes a difference.

I chew my lip, frowning.

“Or let me die,” he breathes, and his good eye closes.

I know that yielding, that acceptance when the end looks like relief. Like peace. I’ve been there, too.

But I’m glad I did not perish in the cabin. It was the only life I could imagine for myself… and yet here I am, doing something new, growing stronger.

I lean close to his pointed ear and say softly, “You might think this is all you will ever be, all you will ever do. But you can’t know what’s going to happen, or what joys might lie ahead, if you just wait… if you take one more step, survive one more day. Besides… we need you here.” Bath salts, plumped pillows, gifts of food left for me on the kitchen table… “I need you.”

A long breath rattles from him.

Holding my arm above his mouth, I slit my palm with the knife, curl my fingers, and squeeze blood between his lips.