10. Kelli

10

KELLI

“ Oh my God !” Kelli gasped as all the lights in the cabin were extinguished at once.

They were plunged into pitch blackness, which was both unexpected and scary! What the hell was going on?

“ Klaus ?” She groped for her Protector in the dark and felt one long arm slide around her shoulders.

“ It’s all right, sunshine— I’ve got you,” his deep voice rumbled.

“ Okay , I just don’t understand what’s happening,” Kelli told him.

“ Me either. I don’t think I should have touched that fucking list,” he growled. “ I think something got fucked up.”

Just then they heard the voice of the cabin again.

“ System recalibrating,” it said in the same soft, feminine voice. “ Please remain still for a moment while Maximum Romance Mode is activated.”

“ Maximum Romance Mode ? What the fuck does that even mean?” Klaus growled, but the voice of the cabin didn’t answer.

Kelli pressed closer to her Protector and put her arms around his waist. She was no longer having quite so much fun. What if the cabin was deficient somehow, like the crazy massage therapist robot? What if they were trapped here now with no way to get out and get home?

“ It’s okay, baby— I’ve got you,” Klaus rumbled, rubbing her back. “ Not going to let anything happen to you, I promise.”

His reassurance and the way he was holding her did make Kelli feel somewhat better. She pressed her face to his side, rubbing her cheek against the warm furry material of the Santa outfit he was still wearing. Under it, she could feel the hard tone of his muscles and his warm, spicy scent which she had always loved seemed to calm her even further.

“ I guess we’d better try to find the way out—” she was just beginning to say when the lights came back on. Not the glowing golden lamps that had lit the cabin when they first came in, however. They remained dark. But a fire suddenly appeared in the fireplace all at once, like someone had turned it on. Also , various candles that Kelli hadn’t noticed before suddenly lit all around them. The only artificial lights were the ones on the Christmas tree, which started glowing again as well.

“ Okay …” Kelli gave a shaky laugh. “ Well , I guess that ‘ Maximum Romance ’ means firelight and candlelight.”

“ But wasn’t that just one of the entries on the list?” Klaus asked, frowning down at her. “ Maximum Romance must mean something else, too.”

As he spoke, they heard a soft but very audible flump outside the cabin.

“ Oh —what was that?” Kelli jumped and grabbed at Klaus’s Santa coat.

“ Don’t know but it sounded like it came from outside. Let’s look out the windows.”

Together they walked over to the nearest window. Klaus didn’t take his arm from around her shoulders and Kelli didn’t ask him to. She was still feeling spooked by the lights-out incident.

What they saw out the pane of glass wasn’t what she expected, however. She had been thinking they would see the quiet, snowy night and the green and gold and red path that had lit their way to the cabin in the first place.

Instead , there was nothing but a solid wall of white on the other side of the glass. Well , not quite solid —there was maybe an inch of clear space above it but she couldn’t see anything out of it.

“ What in the Seven Hells ?” Klaus growled, frowning.

Kelli was confused as well.

“ Open the door,” she suggested. “ Let’s see what’s outside.”

“ All right but stay behind me,” he cautioned.

The two of them walked to the door and Klaus swept open the door quickly.

A solid wall of white greeted them. But this time, Kelli understood.

“ Snowed in!” she exclaimed, leaning around Klaus to scoop out a handful of snow. “ We’re snowed in—stuck in the cabin!”

“ What ? But how can that be? There was barely an inch of snow on the ground when we came in here a few minutes ago,” Klaus growled. “ There’s no fucking way this much came down in the past ten minutes we’ve been in here.”

“ That sound we heard—it must have been the snow falling all around us at once,” Kelli guessed. She hoped uneasily that the roof of the cabin was really strong—it looked like it had snowed seven or eight feet in a single second—they were lucky it hadn’t collapsed under the strain. Then again, maybe the Questarions had built it to withstand the sudden weight and pressure of a huge amount of snow.

“ This is fucking ridiculous, they can’t keep us in here!” Klaus started digging through the snow, which fell in piles around his black Santa boots and began melting on the hardwood floor immediately.

But the more he dug, the more hopeless the situation looked to Kelli . The snow on the porch was almost as high as his forehead and there was no way to tell how far it went on for. Was it just the cabin that was snowed in or was the entire Christmas Village covered? There was no way to know. Still , she did her best to help him with the digging, even though her hands and fingers quickly began to feel numb.

“ Klaus , I don’t know if…if you can tunnel your…your way out,” she panted at last.

“ The hell I can’t!” he growled. “ I’m going to?—”

But just then he stumbled and fell forward into the wall of snow.

Kelli couldn’t understand what was happening at first, but then she remembered the front porch steps. He must have put out his foot, expecting it to land on solid ground and instead the step down was there, making his trip.

“ Klaus ? Klaus , are you all right?”

She blundered into the snowy wall beside him, doing her best to dig him out with her frozen fingers.

The big Kindred was thrashing in the snow, trying to get his balance back. At last, with Kelly pulling on the wide black Santa belt, he managed to get upright, though he was still on his knees on the porch.

“ Fuck !” he growled and wiped the snow off his face. “ This is crazy!”

“ No , this is snowed in,” Kelli told him. “ It was one of the items on the list, remember? I think when you checked the ‘ Maximum Romance ’ box, it included everything else that was offered.”

“ You’re fucking serious?” Klaus swiped his now damp hair off his forehead.

“ I’m afraid so.” Kelli nodded. “ It’s kind of like we went to a restaurant and you ordered everything on the menu.”

“ But how the fuck are we supposed to get out of here?” he demanded. “ I don’t think I can dig our way out. I mean, I can try but there’s no way to know how far this goes on.” He gestured at the snow, where the two of them had barely made a dent. “ If it goes all the way to the ship, we’ll freeze before we get halfway there!”

“ I think we’re only going to be snowed in for the night if what I read on the checklist was right,” Kelli said slowly. “ So it might be better to just come back inside and get warm.” She shivered. “ Even with this fur coat on, I’m freezing! And look at you—you’re soaked to the bone!”

She nodded at his sodden Santa Suit , which had absorbed a lot of melted snow.

“ Yeah , guess I am.” A hard shiver wracked his big body. “ Okay , back inside—at least for now.”

They went back in and Kelli wondered what else was on the Maximum Romance list. There were still a few items she was unsure about.

“ I’m going to find the bathroom and get a shower started for you,” she said to Klaus . “ You strip off those wet clothes before you catch a cold.”

“ You c-c-can’t get a c-cold just from being wet,” he growled, but his teeth were already chattering.

“ Hurry up and get those off,” Kelli ordered. “ Here , you can wrap yourself in this.” She snatched the red and white checked throw off the back of the couch and handed it to him.

Then she went to hunt for the bathroom.