CHAPTER 4

“WAIT A MINUTE.” I drop my foot off of the bed, but a bone-breaking cold zaps up my leg. The clopping hooves vanish into the distance. Without thinking, I wrap one of the furs around my shoulders and speed after him. “Who or what’s a Krampus?”

He doesn’t have a care, brazenly parading down a hallway bare-assed. The tail swishes like a teasing metronome, almost but never quite smacking into the walls. I get a couple of steps out of the bedroom before my mind splats. The halls are all wood. Not that printed wallpaper designed to look like wood. No, this is the real stuff.

Holy shit is it the real stuff. Every square inch of the walls are carved with hyper realistic animals. Herds of deer—with antlers rising to the heavens—frolic between pines. Tiny villages are nestled at the foot of a mountain. Wooden smoke pours from their chimneys. Archways stretch between the walls every ten or so feet. Each one is carved so the scene on the wall carries over to the other side. Fish leap in streams. Waterfalls cascade down from the ceiling. It’s magnificent and terrifying.

“I already told you.”

That shot of espresso voice tears me from my gawking. I catch sight of his black hair vanishing down a staircase at the end of the hall. Hitching up the fur that’s fallen past my ankles I give chase. “Well, do it again,” I shout.

He slips around the curve of the staircase just as I hit the first step. “Do you know of Saint Nicholas?”

“What? Santa Claus? Jolly old fat man? Wears red? Gives presents to the good kids and coal to the naughty?” I grab onto the railing embedded with veins of gold and silver. It’s so smooth, I swear it moisturizes my palm as I chase down. The stairs twist in a spiral. As I go, stones of marble and granite overtake the wood like a mountain consuming a forest. The smooth white becomes gray, then finally an onyx black.

My toes touch the ground floor and heat seeps up through them to the point of pain. Yelping, I leap back to the stairs. Down here everything’s obsidian. Small flecks of copper dance through the black floor and walls. I try to crane my head back to see the ceiling, but it’s fallen into shadow.

The Krampus has stopped in front of me. As hard as I try to not stare, my eyes take in the acres of hard muscle towering above me. All of it is very naked, and starting to glisten like hard, sculpted snow. I gulp, realizing that I’m baking under the fur. Needing a breath, I lower it off of my shoulders.

A little jingle dances in the air as Krampus turns his head. The bonfire torchlight catches on three gold hoops in his ear. I scurry to cover myself again, but he doesn’t fully look back. “I am much like Saint Nick.”

I’m not one to question the eight-foot-tall creature on hooves, but I can see his bare ass. There doesn’t look to be an ounce of fat on him. And he doesn’t strike me as jolly…unless one can be menacingly jolly.

“I punish the wicked.” At the final word, his tongue flicks out like a serpent’s.

“And reward the good?” I ask.

Krampus scratches his chin. “You live, do you not?”

“Uh, I think so.” I look down as if that can prove my state of aliveness.

“Is there any greater reward than life?” He points to a smaller door on the right, not much more than six feet tall. It’s painted red with white trim curving above the top. “Your exit is through there.”

With that final cryptic remark, he takes off toward a huge set of doors. They look like they were stolen from a medieval castle. Of course, for all I know, I’m in a castle right now. Just hopefully not one made out of bones.

“Wait!”

He pauses. “You do so love that word.”

“I don’t understand. You kidnapped me.”

He grumbles at that word.

“Just to let me go? That’s a trap, isn’t it? I walk through that thing and I’ll fall into a pit of spikes or get eaten by giant spiders.”

“I assure you, there is no trick. No trap. And I am uncertain where one finds spiders large enough to consume a human. If you walk through that door, you will be returned to your world. You will have no memory of what transpired here or the night of your ‘kidnapping.’ It will be as if none of this ever happened.”

A snort slips from my nose. “That’s impossible. Where are we? Do I need to call a cab? Walk home?” In this silk nightie while it’s freezing outside? Oh, that’s his trick. He’ll let me go, but I’ll turn into a human popsicle on his doorstep. Then he can do whatever fucked up thing he wants to me.

Just how many fucked up things do I want to do to him?

Gah. That bare ass is breaking my brain. I don’t need to see that tongue in action. I need to get out of here. My foot slips to the floor and the burn is gone. If anything it feels cool here. I test another step and ready my knees to bolt. The creature hasn’t moved. He’s still got his back to me as if he doesn’t care what I do.

“As I already said, walk through that door and you will be returned to your home. You need not concern yourself with the events of the night. Goodbye, Amaya.” With pristine posture, he ambles toward the double castle doors. Torchlight blazes across him highlighting not just that ass, but the black fur coating his thick thighs and his calves until it ends at the high ankle and the hooves below. In the light, he looks more like a horse or goat, but that ass is all human.

Not caring about me openly gawking and questioning the limits of my sexuality, Krampus throws the doors open wide and walks into a new room. I can’t make out much, but he doesn’t bother to close them behind him. My foot slides after to give chase.

I wrench myself back. What the hell am I doing? This is my chance. I need to get out of here.

Spinning, I focus on the red door. It’s rather plain compared to all of the masterpieces carved into the walls. The red paint is starting to chip and the doorknob looks tarnished everywhere but the handle. That’s my exit. Just go through there, forget everything that happened.

I stare at the welt on my wrist. The skin’s gone red and purple with swelling white spots. Blisters. Great. Will those vanish too when I walk through the door? Or this heart-leaping panic I can’t shake. I thought I was going to die, and the jury’s still out on if I will.

Leave. Go through the door. Right now. Don’t look back. I’ll be free. My mind erased.

I cup my palm over the polished knob. Not the goat-man’s. Ha! No, the door. My escape to freedom. All I’ve got to do is turn it and I’ll be sucked back home, my heart and mind clear of all of this pain.

My wrist twists the doorknob and pain shoots up my arm.

Why? Why the hell did he chain me up? How did I get up there and in this incredibly unflattering, tiny ass nightie? Why did the monster with fur and hooves save me? He didn’t even hesitate to cut me down. But why the fuck was I up there in the first place?

What else did that asshole do to me? What else did he have planned for me?

A thousand questions whirl in my mind like a knife storm. I can’t let this go. I have to know what the hell happened to me. Bundling the fur back around my shoulders, I stomp after Krampus.

“Tell me what the fu-u-u…”

My eyes bug out of my head as I walk into a crystal snow globe. Thirty-foot-high rounded windows overlook a wintery hellscape. A blizzard rages just outside the glass, giving only glimpses of the jagged black mountains beyond. The storm looks even more ferocious in comparison to the bubbling oasis at my feet. Water, as turquoise as the Caribbean, fills this living snow globe. Stones line the back, giving a single lip to what would otherwise be an eternity pool to a very cold and very sharp drop. There’s a vague scent of egg in the air, but otherwise, this is the biggest and fanciest bathtub I’ve ever seen.

“Oh, you’re still here.” Krampus has waded into the pool, the water lapping halfway up to his calves. Black fur dances in the scattershot bubbles.

“Yes,” I shout, walking toward the edge of the bath. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what the hell happened.”

After having his back to me this whole time, Krampus turns his head in profile. A single red eye stares me down but I’m lost on his face. I’d been bracing myself for an ugly, scarred head more animal than man. Hair curls down the sides of his cheeks and across his upper lip, but cuts off just before the chin. A little soul patch fills in what’s missing, but there’s no sign of the five-foot-long beard I’d felt when he had grabbed me. Instead, a cute dimple presses into his chin. His nose is sharp and wide like a snout, but the lips are plump with a hard cupid’s bow that flatlines at the top. If not for the batlike ears and curved horns sprouting from his head, he’d be like an old-fashioned desperado ready to be ridden hard and put away wet.

He might look more human than I expected, but there’s no gentleman in there. “Interesting,” Krampus says before he fully turns to face me.

No preamble, no modestly sliding into the water. He openly faces me with everything hanging out.

Holy shit.

Here’s the real beast. Pecs like hubcaps stretch across his gorilla-sized chest. A forest of black fur drapes from between his curved pecs down to his abs. It stops just as a heavy treasure trail points right to the cock slapping into the water.

That man-beast is a good eight feet tall and his cock reaches past his thighs. That’s got to be… Do the math. Carry the one. Fucking huge! That tree doesn’t need any bush trimming to stand like a sequoia. Instead of harsh pubes, a thicket of fur sprouts around his loins. I clench my toes, curious how soft all of his hair is. His cock jerks, spraying water.

A little tinkle of bells dances in the air.

“Well…” Without a care, Krampus drops into the water. He leans back against the retaining wall and stretches his arms across it. Long, meaty forearms and ham-sized biceps support him as he closes his eyes and tosses his head back. “Ask your questions.”