5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Bastion

H ogan Humphries needed to be punished, and I was just the monster for the job.

I wasn’t exactly the most experienced at the role I was born into. But just like my father, and his father before him, it was in my blood.

I’d inherited a lot of things with my father’s passing, like his struggling Christmas tree farm… Which maybe wouldn’t have been under such financial strain if he’d spent as much time managing his business as he did running around being what was basically Christmas Bigfoot with a penchant for justice.

While I didn’t inherit my dad’s obsession for being the Krampus, there was no escaping the dark magic that granted me the power to transform into a great horned beast with a serpent-like tongue, a horse-sized cock, and a wicked taste for retribution.

Unlike lycanthropy or vampirism, the monster disease was hereditary and only one being at a time could carry it. So four years ago, when my father passed away, I’d inherited the family business—held together by duct tape and holiday spirit—as well as the curse.

Lucky me.

My family was the reason our little town was known for Krampus sightings. It started when my great-grandfather migrated from Germany to these mountains around the turn of the century.

While it was Saint Nick’s job to reward the good, it was our job to punish the naughty by shoving them into a sack, taking them into the mountains and beating them senseless. Then their memories would be wiped of the details and they’d be set loose.

“You have the bloodline, Bastion.” I remember my grandfather telling me when I was small. Too small to understand at the time that he was dying. “One day you will be the next Krampus. You will protect these mountains. Always remember, we don’t kill. We’re not that kind of monster.”

I was never interested in taking over my family’s legacy, even though I carried the monster inside me. It wasn’t like what had lived inside my grandfather. It was something dark and terrible, swirling beneath the surface.

I kept it locked inside me and never indulged those urges to punish and harm… Until I’d gotten the sense that the girl I’d been in love with since grade school was being abused by her piece of shit fiancé.

For the first time since my father’s death, I’d release the monster, if that’s what it took to protect her.

I didn’t have proof that the hog farmer was beating her. But as the Krampus, even when I wasn’t shifted, I got feelings about this sort of thing. It didn’t help that Clara was an expert at keeping her problems to herself. She didn’t want anyone to help her. Ever since we were little she’d always been insistent on figuring her own shit out.

If Hogan really was hurting her, she needed to get help or, in the very least, get herself to safety. Maybe she wasn’t in a position where she could. So I watched her like a hawk.

I didn’t always follow her home, but tonight, something felt horribly off. My gut proved right yet again when she exploded from the front door in a blood-splattered apron. Moments later, after she got into her car, her fiancé stumbled after her with a shotgun clutched in his bloody hands.

Ancient, unholy rage filtered through my system.

For the first time, I felt my desire to indulge in my monstrous urges to their full extent. I wanted to take Hogan to the hidden mountain cave my family had used for years—stocked with chains and torture equipment. By the time I was done with him, he’d be a new man. Well, a dead one. But still new.

However, my evil plans disintegrated instantly once I registered Hogan’s wounds.

“Verdammter Schei?,” the German curse dropped from my lips with my next frozen breath. It looked like Clara had enough of his shit, and was taking matters in her own hands…

What a good fucking girl. Naughty, of course. But damn, I was proud of her. What was more, seeing Hogan bleeding and frothing at the mouth—she must have poisoned him and probably took a knife to his face once the rotund fuck didn’t go down—had my cock swelling in my pants.

That was the fiery Clara I knew and loved, the one she’d kept locked up tight for two miserable years.

I tensed from where I hid behind a giant blow-up snowman lawn ornament. I never shifted. Yet, I was ready to release the monster caged inside me at any moment to help Clara.

It seemed she’d taken the note I left in her Christmas present to heart. She was saving herself.

Clara jumped in her car, started up the engine. Hogan probably couldn’t aim worth a shit, so he needed to get up and close to take his shot… so he did, right in front of the car.

A deranged smile split my lips as I dug out a candy cane from my pocket and began to suck it into a point.

I had a feeling I was in for a show.

If Hogan wasn’t so sloshed, from alcohol and whatever Clara had given him, I’d be on top of him in seconds, ripping out his throat with my claws. Regardless of the fact that Clara would see me shift in front of her. My secret would be out. Not that it mattered, if that was the price for keeping her alive.

But Hogan could barely hold his gun up. His finger wasn’t even on the trigger.

Clara drove the car forward, straight into her abuser and crushed the two-hundred-and something-pound man into his own garage door with her Subaru Outback.

She backed up, contemplating as he crumpled onto the frozen driveway.

Then she ran into him again, repeating the cycle at least half a dozen times.

My cock was painfully hard now as I watched the girl I loved reap the revenge I’m sure she deserved.

The Subaru’s tail lights flicked on, bathing the driveway in an ominous red glow one final time before she cut the engine and climbed out of the car. She walked around the front of her car as calm as a cucumber.

I thought she would start to clean up after her crime, but instead she pulled off the wreath—the one she’d been trying to perfect at her shop today—and disappeared inside.

I stifled an incredulous laugh when she walked back out a few minutes later with all the gore cleaned off and a new fresh bow tied to the smushed branches and affixed it to her bloody and beaten car hood with a smile. As if the wreath fixed everything.

I couldn’t help but stare in complete awe at this woman.

There wasn’t much I cared about these days. The fucks I had to give were spread thin between being Krampus and running the tree farm, but my attention and ability to give a fuck never seemed to wane when it came to Clara.

Ever since we were little kids, I’d seen her for what she was. Full of fire and joy and strength she didn’t let anyone else see. And she smelled so fucking good . Like fresh ginger, clean linen and coconut shampoo, though during the holidays she switched to peppermint. I’d go into her shop right around the first of December just to smell it lacing the air, the scent stronger and sweeter than any of her floral arrangements.

I always knew she was tough, but this side of her I’d never seen before.

A new plan unfurled in my mind.

It wasn’t Hogan needing my punishment—Clara had that handled herself.

She was a murderer. She’d been well within her right to kill her fiancé… but I was the Krampus. It was in my nature to punish. With her, maybe I didn’t need to keep the monster inside me locked up.

I knew what kind of books she liked to read. Whenever I saw her reading a new title between lulls at her shop, I went and picked up the book for myself.

Sweet, kind, level-headed Clara, who ran the darling little floral ship in an adorable Christmas town. No one but me knew what a little deviant she was. The kind that liked to be punished—in a certain way a stupid man like Hogan Humphries didn’t have the brain cells to understand. I doubted she ever let Hogan read her books, not when it ran the risk of him thinking she liked his abuse.

But I knew the nuances between the two. Maybe there was a world where I could let the monster inside out to play, where Clara got her punishment for her crime, and a reward for saving herself.

I could give her the kind of punishment she needed, the kind she’d love even as she screamed and squirmed.

My grin turned manic as I watched naughty little Clara begin to clean up her mess.

Hogan was gone.

Now she’d have an even bigger monster to worry about.