Son of Krampus (Holidays of Love)

by Ellen Mint

  “It struck him harder than he ever wanted to admit. To watch as the woman he loved, the first that he let himself care for, fade from this world.”

  “How…?” Nadire gulped, tears rising in her eyes. Emeric felt a sting in his soul for causing her such pain. Why did he bring her out here? What good was revealing this part of his past to her? “How long did she live?”

  “A hundred and five years thanks to my father.” He tried to smile in pride, both of them working to tend to his ailing mother as she slipped further into dementia. They lived for the good days, Emeric often leaving his teaching at University to spend an afternoon with her in the sun. But even that had to end.

  The war. They left for one, only to return and have to abandon their home for another. All the while, his mother grew sicker. When the plumes of death were wafted away by the cleansing breeze, when the ricochet of bullets gave way to birdsong they returned for one more day. Which was when she flew to their Lord’s side.

  That set off the pair of them. Emeric had been trying to live his own life, often at his mother’s behest. To settle down, to start a family. She’d ached for grandchildren after she was unable to have any beyond him. But he had his studies, and there was the Krampus problem. By the time he finally looked up from the comforting hole he dug himself into, it was too late.

  With nothing tying them down, Emeric and Mirek traveled the world. They saw not the tourist sites, but the people, the pain inflicted across the world often in the bastardized name of freedom. In time, decades upon decades, his father had picked back up the craft he’d once abandoned. The only difference was that this go around, he had his son by his side.

  That was what he wanted to tell Nadire. To explain why this was so important to not only himself, but his father, his past, his family, the memory of his mother. To leave a legacy behind that was helping the world instead of hiding from it. But he couldn’t voice it, couldn’t find his tongue as he revealed to her nothing more than a tree planted atop a long-dead corpse.

  “You don’t understand,” he whispered, his eyes screwed up tight.

  “Understand what?” She grew combative almost instantly as if she was hoping for a fight to cover over their unsaid words. “I am not a child.”

  “No, but…” Emeric dipped a finger down the looping B of his mother’s name. “Death doesn’t touch you.”

  “That’s not true,” Nadire bristled. “I’ve known plenty of people who’ve died.”

  “How many were family?” He pleaded with her to see any of it. “How can you be of the world when everything you care about is shielded by God?”

  Some part of Emeric knew he was being cruel, that he’d picked yet another fight to try and get her to leave. Not because he wanted her gone, but because he had no idea how to reconcile what his father needed against what his heart ached for. It felt like attempting to use a German appliance in an American outlet. If he tried, he’d just get electrocuted.

  He expected Nadire to take a metaphorical swing at him, instead she fell quiet. He risked staring at her to find the woman that’d blazed to pure anger at the slightest insult to her family was quietly gnawing upon her thoughts.

  Why was she here?

  “Why did you show me this?” Nadire whispered. She didn’t sound confused or upset. At least not in the need to thrash him. It struck against Emeric’s core to find more tears welling in her eyes.

  “I don’t…” He turned back to his mother’s tree. To the constant reminder that no matter what he did, whatever connection he could find in another person, it would end with a cold headstone beside the trunk of a sprouting tree.

  “My life was this.” Nadire excised from her purse what looked like an old day to day calendar. Judging by the olive color it was probably a remnant from the seventies she’d bought hundreds of because she preferred its style. “Christmas. Living for my father, for the holiday, for whatever was demanded of us.”

  Emeric gnashed on his bottom lip and nodded his head. He knew that was her purpose in life. She all but screamed it even without the tinsel scarf and flashing light sweater. When something, like him, threw off her plans to execute a perfect Christmas, she turned into a shark. And, in truth, he was much the same.

  As silence wrapped around the grotto, Emeric watched Nadire stare forlornly into her day planner. “Always living for someone else. I thought…” The right side of her lips lifted as if she wanted to smile but couldn’t. “It seemed to be enough. It was enough.”

  Eternal brown eyes, more precious than a baby fawn’s, pleaded with Emeric as if there was something she was struggling to voice. For good measure, Nadire waggled her planner back and forth. “Everything changed and I didn’t even notice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She snickered, her shoulder crooking nearly to her ear as she said, “You.”

  Fumbling back, his heel bouncing into his mother’s stone, Emeric said, “Me?” Did she see him as an infection tearing apart her life?

  “I never even noticed people anymore. They were a bag of wants and water, quick to die out and be replaced by another set. I couldn’t comprehend the idea of pausing, breathing in the world again, and…falling.” Nadire gulped, the sun alighting upon her cheeks. Emeric realized that she was barefaced, nary a touch of makeup to shield her, to mask her from the demanding world. She was in her raw form and it caused his heart to bang against his ribs.

  “Falling?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to me. Not to… I never cared. Not the way I was meant to. Supposed to? Then you just walk in and…” She swallowed a breath, her words still jumbled in Emeric’s ears, but his body understanding. As he reached a hand out to her, the barrier that professionalism and their families had put in place evaporated. Nadire met him halfway, her arms gliding across his waist as she pulled herself closer.

  The ache renewed with vigor, practically salivating at the woman in his embrace. At her heat rolling down his chest, at the scent filling his soul with her myrrh and cinnamon. At the impossibility of Nadire Myra slotting against his body once again.

  “Why…?” Emeric’s breath parted over her hair as she nuzzled her cheek to his chest. He could feel his heart trying to nuzzle back from inside. “Why did you come here?” he finally voiced the question that wouldn’t leave him. Why return? Why track him down?

  Every other encounter was a mistake, pure accident, or Nadire being pulled back into a mess of his making. She never chose it purposefully, not like this.

  A chuckle rumbled through her ribs pressed to his, her face pivoting until she emerged from his safe arms to gaze directly into his eyes. Her body flattened tight to his, thighs upon thighs, chest to chest, arms locking so the other would never vanish. With a ruffle of her breath, she whispered, “For you.”

  They met in a kiss pure as an angel’s wings. Both lips softened at the exact moment, both pressed their souls into the touch that for the first time wasn’t lust induced. An odd sensation sloshed around in his mind, Emeric wanting to both laugh in triumph and cry in shock. She seemed to be trapped by the same confounding enchantment, wetness dripping from her eyes to land where his palm pressed to her cheek.

  “I’ve cut all the logs we’ll need and was thinking of ordering from the Thai place…”

  The sound of his father’s voice carrying on the winds sent both scampering back. A pop of their lips separating in haste reverberated up the needles of the silver fur as Emeric swung his eyes towards the backdoor to watch his father wander into the yard. Mirek was paging through the old paper menu, clearly having no idea of what happened.

  “I really want to try this…” His dinner order snapped away as he finally caught the guest. Sneering in an instant, his father asked, “What are you doing here? Come to sabotage our claim? Or are you spying for your father? Good luck getting down that chimney!” Mirek jerked his thumb back to the plume of black smoke practically spewing from the top of the cabin.

  Nadire followed his jab, her eyes narrow
ed as she seemed to be thinking the same as Emeric—Nicholas didn’t really travel via chimney. Before she could answer, Mirek dashed forward and draped an arm around his son as if he needed to rescue him from the dangerous woman. “Whatever it is, tell Nick he can shove it where the sun—”

  “The Feast of Saint Nicholas,” Nadire spoke over him.

  That threw his father’s attempt to bum rush her out the door completely off. “What of it?” was his response.

  “My father says you can assist him on the sixth of December, provided you are willing to compromise as well.”

  Mirek laughed heartily at that, a palm slamming into Emeric’s shoulder as he shouted, “Hear that? Ol’ Nick’s running scared already.” He wanted his son to pull on the attorney garb and bamboozle the Myras, but Emeric’s heart was shattering into pieces. She said she was here for him, but if there was a deal to be struck instead…?

  It was a shrewd businesswoman who stared Mirek down, her shoulders back, chin raised as if she thought nothing of the old man whooping up his assumed win. But, for the briefest of moments, her eyes pivoted to Emeric. She had to read the heartbreak on his face; he’d failed to hide any of it safely away.

  Her eyes melted, her stance softening, and she mouthed, “I’m why” at him.

  She was why? What did that mean?

  Blessed Jesus and Mary. She was forcing her father to make this deal. Because she wanted the feud over. To save Christmas or…?

  “Mr. Hellswarth,” Nadire commanded as strong as any lawyer in court, “do you agree to this deal?”

  “Su…”

  Emeric cut him off, “What are the exact terms of this compromise?”

  Her eyes drifted across the two men as if she’d never seen them before. Licking her lips, Nadire said, “My father has final say on any punishment yours will dole out.”

  “What?!” Mirek shouted, “No, that is unacceptable…”

  “That’s the deal. If you leave it, you will not walk with him on the Feast day.”

  Mirek stomped his foot, his shaggy head shaking as if he had the horns on and he wanted to gore her. “Right, like that ol’ milksop can be trusted to come up with anything more befitting than a light scolding. Oh, well, you feel bad. That’s enough of a punishment for gluing your brother’s hair to—”

  “Vati!” Emeric shouted, trying to get his father to both not threaten Nadire and focus.

  “What?” the old man hollered back.

  “This gets you what you want,” he tried to remind his father. They’d been struggling for this, for attention and remembrance for decades.

  Still, Mirek wanted it all and was pissed about a small opening. “Hardly,” he snorted, glaring at Nadire, “but…it’s a start. Alright, child.”

  That caused Nadire to bristle. Doubtful she’d been a child for a few countries birthdays, but that was his father’s way. He’d call giant redwoods saplings sometimes.

  “We’ll be agreeing to this feast compromise. At least seeing how it goes and then, if we can find a peace, dropping the lawsuit.”

  Nadire’s steel facade cracked instantly, her face brightening as she exclaimed, “That’s wonderful news.” Breaking from the old goat, who was grumbling about what all he’d need for his walk across the globe, her eyes burned into Emeric’s.

  Electricity crackled between them, his blood pumping as he realized that she was free to remain. For the two of them to give in to their carnal delights. Oh, they may have spoken words of…bonding, but that innate need to feel her skin below his, to bury himself into her, was never abated.

  Reaching a hand out, Emeric began, “You could stay for…”

  “Well,” Mirek interrupted, barely hearing his son. “What are you waiting for?” he shouted at Nadire who was frozen in place. “Get going. Tell Ol’ Scratch that the deal’s done and he best be planning on me sitting beside him. Don’t tell me he still smokes those clove monstrosities. Ugh, I reek for weeks after.”

  “I…” Nadire whipped her eyes from the grumbling Krampus up to the son who just got cockblocked by his own father. “I suppose I should.”

  “Yes, shoo. We need to plan on our own, daughter of Nicholas.” Mirek shook both hands as if trying to scare away a squirrel.

  Fucking hell. Emeric clenched his fists, his father completely unaware, as Nadire slunk away from him. She could travel in a step, but she didn’t seem to want to leave. Her eyes kept darting up to his, pleading for some answer to save her, but Emeric had none. The cabin wasn’t exactly soundproof. There was no way he could hide her in there. He was trapped with an unending case of blueballs.

  With a final wave that was little more than a jostle of her fingers, Nadire stepped backwards and that delectable body he didn’t get to see more of than her face and hands vanished. All that remained was the scent of myrrh and a strumming in his veins that wasn’t going away anytime soon.

  “Father, why did you…?” Emeric began, but the old man grabbed his forearm and clung tight.

  “Best be careful with that one,” he whispered into his son’s ear. “She might be pretty as a diamond, but she’s cold as ice.”

  Seemed like she was melting in his palm rather nicely.

  “Come on, we should celebrate. Nicky’s done gotten backed into a corner. Just a matter of time until we get Christmas proper too,” Mirek shouted, his arms wide as he made a beeline for the liquor cabinet. No doubt a bottle of schnapps was calling his name.

  Emeric remained in the shade of his mother’s tree, his body still lost in the warm shadow of Nadire’s embrace. They’d meet again for the Feast in a few days. And, in time, perhaps they wouldn’t have to keep hiding this affair from their parents.

  “Are you coming or not?” his father shouted from the backdoor.

  “Yes, Vati. I am forever at your side,” Emeric grumbled, having to adjust his gait to hide how his body missed the woman who could vanish on a flutter of snowflakes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  TO SAY QUARTERS were cramped was an understatement. Emeric was nearly splayed against the back of a tiny elevator. It wouldn’t be quite such a challenge was his father not in full Krampus mode.

  Despite the centuries of learning that come December fifth through the sixth his father would sprout a meter, grow cloven hooves, and dark brown hair erupt from his chest to his legs it was still awkward to share a space with. Particularly, as the man in goat form wore headphones to listen to the music on his phone.

  A smile twisted up the hellish visage, the foot-long tongue struggling to voice the words of an average man saying, “Ja, this one’s great. Can you put it on my iPad when we get home?”

  “You don’t have an iPad,” Emeric recited without thought, trying to not sweat through the heavy suit he donned for this professional trip to the North Pole. He’d expected to gather in Nicholas’ office, not to be ushered directly into a tiny elevator from a Hitchcock film at the whims of a strange, glittering woman.

  “I do too,” Mirek insisted. “This big.” He tried to hold his hands to approximate the size, but his claws made it almost impossible. “Full of pictures you’re always telling me to clear out.”

  And apps he had no concept on how to close. Emeric folded his arms tighter to his chest, praying for a cool breeze as he mumbled, “You do not have an iPad. You have an Android tablet.”

  “Same difference.” His father waved off the tech pedantry as the elevator came to a rickety halt. When the double irised eyes of the goat caught his son’s, Emeric realized he’d been praying under his breath for the elevator shaft to not kill them.

  “Sounds as if we’re here,” Mirek said, reaching for the latch on the gate because this system had to have been built when most people wrote in Latin.

  “Ah.” The unnerving, glistening woman drifted closer to him. Drifted literally because despite having feet she seemed against using them. Her face was difficult to look at. Not that it was unpleasing to the eye, only that to do so for too long would cause Emeric’s sight to water.
And he couldn’t cease smelling off her the combination of peppermint, a winter’s breeze, pine sap, and blood. She hadn’t introduced herself, simply floated into the elevator and pushed a few buttons.

  “Here.” From within her body, she pulled out what looked like a mic pack, the wires striped red and white instead of black. “You’re supposed to wear this, um…” She glanced around his father’s nearly naked state. Emeric knew there were pants under there, because he’d reminded his father five times, but the glimmer of the fur covered over them.

  “What for?” Mirek asked, picking at the wire in disgust as if he hadn’t just had earbuds in a moment earlier.

  “It’s…tradition? The Captain told me to put it on you, so…” The poor woman gulped. She got the micro headset on the Krampus’ elongated face by extending the wraparound plastic to its limits. His father’s ear twitched at the mike clamped to it. It was the battery pack she struggled with.

  Sucking in a sigh, Emeric excised it from her fingers and found his father’s belt hidden below the illusion of hair. Mirek chuckled at the challenge. “Nick doesn’t have enough names? He has to call himself Captain now.”

  “Not him,” the woman chirped before pressing a hand to the panel and cheerfully calling, “The Krampus is online.”

  “Excellent,” Nadire spoke from thin air. It was foolish, but a smile twisted up Emeric’s lips. He’d worried his tagging along might all be for naught and he wouldn’t even see her.

  Before he could wipe the silly sentiment from his face, he felt his father’s eyes peering through him. “So it’s that one doing the calls. Interesting.”

  Yanking apart the elevator gate, the helper woman revealed what looked like a landing pad for a helicopter. The glass dome was still in place, but Emeric spotted where it’d retract to the snow outside. He was sad to not see the sleigh there, only a few cargo crates, ancient computers running on black and green monitors, and an array of snacks.