Curse of Christmas: A Collection of Paranormal Holiday Stories

by Thea Atkinson

  They might have happily lived as a ménage à trois if Alys had not fallen pregnant with Hugh and me at which point Lyrus had cast Syla aside. Apparently neither he nor my mother had considered Syla’s feelings in the matter. Nor had they entertained the possibility that Syla might also be pregnant.

  “Wait,” I said. “Marus is my brother?”

  Eeuw.

  “I don’t believe that he is,” Lyrus said, “though she certainly wanted everyone to think so. That’s why she gave him a name that only exists in my family.”

  “So she never had another lover? You never sent her love to die in the Goblin Wars?”

  “No. And no.”

  I chewed on that for a moment and felt just a sliver of sympathy for my aunt, who’d been so desperate to “sell” me her version of the story that she’d created a “Canadian boyfriend.”

  “When you born, Alys and I were very happy,” he said.

  “Even though we have bi-colored eyes?” I said skeptically.

  “Do mortals consider that a flaw?” he asked.

  “I don’t,” I said, and there was an edge of anger in my voice that I couldn’t control. “But I’m told it is the reason you had us sent away, because we were not perfect in your eyes.”

  “Syla lied,” he said. “Having double-colored eyes is considered quite lucky among my folk. And I never sent you away.”

  A fresh spasm of pain twisted his perfect face. “You were stolen away,” he said. “I suspected Syla had something to do with it but short of torturing her to death to get the truth, there was little I could do but banish her to the Verge and close both borders against her.”

  “And my mother?” I said.

  “Your mother went mad when we lost you. I sent Allard to search the world for you. When he did not return immediately, Alys fell into deeper despair and while the balance of her mind was disturbed, she took her own life.”

  There was genuine grief in his voice and I realized that for him it was a fresh grief. If time worked differently in the Verge, these events would have just happened weeks ago in his world and not years.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, thinking, poor woman. I felt a pang of grief of my own but mostly hearing this was like listening to a fairy tale, where all the mothers and fathers seem to die. I had never known my mother, nor ever would, and that was a pain I’d grown used to.

  “How many years was Allard Syla’s captive? I’m twenty-three,” I said. “Has it been all that time?”

  He made a sound that was almost a sob. “Syla will pay.”

  We both fell silent as we approached the cottage.

  I knew Marus would have warned Syla Lyrus was in the Verge. I knew that she would be planning a nasty reception.

  Chapter 8

  “Lyrus,” Syla said. “You’re looking well.”

  Lyrus didn’t bother to reply. I realized he was checking out the room. Syla was sitting on her bed, holding that leather-bound book. Marus was standing at the table. It was like the standoff in an old spaghetti western. Marus was practically vibrating with suppressed rage.

  The tension was so thick I couldn’t stand it.

  “Marus tried to kill Allard,” I said to Syla.

  She glanced at her son. “Tried?” she asked, and he flinched as if the contempt in her voice had physically wounded him.

  “He came,” Marus said, sounding like a sulky toddler as he pointed a bony shoulder n Lyrus’ direction.

  Syla turned her attention back to my father.

  “Where is Allard now?”

  “Back in the land of light,” Lyrus snapped. “Where he belongs.”

  Syla’s mask of cold contempt slipped a bit.

  “It used to be my home too.”

  She put aside the leather-bound book—her Book of Secrets—and rose to her feet. It might have been a trick of the light but it seemed that she was several feet taller than usual. “You made a mistake exiling me here, Lyrus. What you did was bottle up the Verge’s magic while letting fae and mortal magic leak in at the borders. I’ve been soaking it all up for almost a quarter of a century. I’m stronger than you are now.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself witch,” Lyrus responded. “You cursed Allard and you’ve held my daughter against her will, but that’s all. And Hilde is coming with me now.”

  “What makes you think I intend to let her go?” Syla asked, reptilian lips curving up in a mimicry of mirth.

  “Because I’ve asked you for her,” he said. “And I won’t ask twice.”

  Wow, dad’s a bad ass. Who knew?

  Without looking at me, Lyrus said, “Fetch me the book on her bed.” Syla looked alarmed for a second before she mastered her emotions again.

  I stepped forward and Syla made a twitching motion with her hand that stopped me in my tracks.

  “You do not want to bring this fight here,” Lyrus said. “Not here and not with me.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marus move.

  “Lyrus,” I cried, and he turned to meet the threat, holding up his hand like a traffic cop.

  Marus fell as if he’d run head-first into a concrete wall.

  Syla didn’t react.

  “The book,” Lyrus said.

  I nodded and took another step toward the bed. Syla made that odd twitching motion with her hand again and this time I felt a cold hand clutch my heart. I cried out and she smiled. Lyrus glanced at me and in the instant his attention was off Marus, the witch-boy sent a bolt of some sort of energy at him. It bounced off Lyrus and rebounded on him.

  As the energy hit him, Marus exploded into a million little pieces. There was no blood, only a faint spray of what looked like brackish water.

  That did get a reaction from Syla.

  “Marus,” she screamed and ran to his remains, trying to gather them up as if they were ashes spilled from a hearth.

  I could feel an implacable pity radiating from Lyrus. He hadn’t wanted to kill Marus but he felt no guilt either.

  She looked up at us and spit, and where her spittle hit the floor, it sizzled.

  “You’re just like her,” she said to me, nodding at the book in my arms. “Always wanting what was mine.”

  “Is that why you drove her to kill herself?” I asked, “by kidnapping me and Hugh?”

  “I told the goblin to kill you. I did not know he would be so tender-hearted as to let you live.”

  “Why?” Lyrus asked her.

  “Because I loved you and you loved her.”

  He shook his head. “There was never any love in you,” he said, “you coveted my talent but that was all.”

  “We were twins,” she said. “As alike as peas in a pod.”

  “You were nothing alike,” he said. “Your evil made you ugly.” He glanced at me, saw that I had picked up the book he sought. “My daughter and I are leaving now,” he said. “We won’t see you again.”

  She looked bewildered for a moment. “But…you can’t leave me here alone.”

  Her plea came out as a whine.

  “You’re free to go back to the mortal world,” he said. “I was wrong to deny you that passage.”

  “But I want to go back to the land of light.”

  He shook his head. “That border will remain closed to you forever.”

  Her disbelief slowly morphed into fury. “I will kill you Lyrus.”

  Lyrus did not look particularly alarmed by that threat.

  “Farewell, Syla.”

  In answer, she curled her fingers and then gestured like she was unleashing a fast ball over home plate.

  Straight at me.

  I felt the tattoo on my hip pulse with heat and instinctively brought the book up to shield my face.

  Whatever dark magic she had flung at me hit her Book of Secrets instead.

  “No,” she screamed as the book disintegrated, just as Marus had.

  “No,” I echoed, realizing my instinctive action might have doomed Allard to a life trapped in a beastly body. Nononononono.

&n
bsp; Syla took a step forward and Lyrus muttered a few words that stopped her.

  She crumpled to the floor in utter defeat. “My book,” she said. He said nothing.

  I was left with empty hands and a burning pain on my hip.

  “Come,” Lyrus said, ushering me out of the cottage ahead of him. I was glad to have him at my back because I was sure the furious witch was going to loose a few more lightning bolts at us in parting. But no such magical attack came and when we left the house, we found Geweih, the silver-horned stag, waiting for us.

  Lyrus helped me mount, then got up behind me.

  “Take us home,” he said and the animal obeyed.

  We traveled in silence for a little while and then I said, “It might have been kinder to kill her,.”

  My father snorted. “You mortals are much too sentimental.”

  His voice was cold and I shivered.

  Though there was no border that I could see, I knew the moment we crossed from the Verge into the fae-lands. Everything suddenly seemed more vivid, like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when everything transforms from black and white to color.

  Geweih picked its way along a path of mossy stones that wound between dozens of little lakes fringed with a riot of wildflowers. We eventually came to the foot of a granite mountain incongruously topped with snow although the air was very warm.

  “It snows here?” I asked, surprised.

  “No,” he said, looking up at the snow as if he hadn’t seen it before. “That is just a bit of magic.”

  “Set decoration,” I said but he didn’t seem to understand what I meant, so he didn’t answer.

  There was a cave-like opening hidden behind a barrier of rose bushes filled with great double blossoms. The stag moved through the bushes as if the thorns were made of rubber and totally harmless.

  He stopped at the entrance so we could get off his back and then Lyrus sent him off with an affectionate slap to his flanks. Geweih gave him such an adoring look I have though he might roll over for a belly rub.

  I don’t know what I expected a fairy’s home to look like. Maybe something like Rivendell from Lord of the Rings. This was not that.

  Lyrus’ home was carved out of living rock covered in moss so thick it looked like green fur. It was filled with fantastical furniture crafted from woods I didn’t recognize and hides from creatures whose names I couldn’t begin to guess.

  But I wasn’t there to gawk at my surroundings like I’d just rented a particularly exotic Airbnb. “Where’s Allard?” I asked.

  Without looking at me, Lyrus said, “I will take you to him but then you must go.”

  Go?

  “I’m not going anywhere until I know he’s okay.”

  Lyrus did look at me then. “Nothing good will come of it Hildegarde.”

  “That’s not really your decision to make, is it?”

  I was starting to get the hang of this “standing up for myself” thing.

  “Come then,” he said.

  We found Allard lying on a bed in a tower that was part of a massive Sequoia tree. Dozens of the little firefly fairies were in attendance and when Lyrus entered the tower, their color changed from purple to a deep green. It seemed to be some sort of gesture of respect, for after Lyrus nodded gravely in response, their color returned to “normal.”

  Allard looked peaceful, but he was so still it looked like he was laid out on a funeral bier rather than sleeping. He had been draped to the neck in a living coverlet woven of wildflowers and butterfly wings and his long fur was braided with more flowers. Absurdly, I thought of a Pinterest page I’d once seen that was devoted to pictures of men with flowers in their beards.

  “Allard,” I said softly, moving to the side of his bed. He did not stir, but several of the butterflies on his coverlet were agitated by my presence and rose to dance around my face as if scolding me for disturbing his sleep.

  His arms lay outside the coverlet and I picked up one of his hands and held it in both of my own.

  There was an old scar on his palm, the remnant of a horrible injury. I kissed an irregular, raised mark. “Come back to me,” I whispered but there was no response.

  I don’t know how long I stood there before Lyrus spoke.

  “If he could be brought back to us by sheer force of will, your devotion would have achieved that goal already.”

  I turned to smile at him, knowing he meant the words kindly even though they held no comfort at all.

  “Hope springs eternal,” I said, just to say something to fill the silence between us and the hollow feeling growing in my belly.

  He frowned. “Hope,” he repeated, as if it was an unfamiliar word, and then he said it again with a different inflection but no real feeling.

  He really is bad at this, I thought.

  “When I told you I did not approve of your affection for Allard, I was not being truthful,” he said, his voice low and his eyes on the man we both loved. “My words were not truly rooted in disapproval, but rather in fear.”

  “Fear?” I asked, giving him my full attention.

  “We fae look human enough but we’re not. And that can be …”

  He searched for a word and I fought the impulse to fill in the blanks. Troublesome? Worrisome? Disastrous?

  “Tragic,” he said finally.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” I said. “Half of my heart is fae after all.”

  “But will half be enough?” he asked, but didn’t seem to expect an answer, so I kept silent.

  After a while, Lyrus patted me awkwardly on the shoulder and left soundlessly, leaving behind the slight smell of violets he seemed to carry around like a tangible aura.

  Alone, I took up my vigil, staring at Allard’s sleeping form and my mind wandered to a conversation he and I had had about fairy tales. Allard had told me that many of the fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers actually had their basis in fact. “Sleeping Beauty” was one of the best-known fairy tales on the planet.

  Could it be? I thought. Could a kiss be the way to end the curse?

  I looked at Allard.

  He did not seem to be in any distress but his eyelids were so thin I could see his pupils dancing behind them in the grip of some dream.

  His fur was drenched and matted with fever sweat even though the little fairies seemed to be fanning him with their wings.

  I bent down and closed my eyes and kissed him.

  It was like kissing a shaggy bathmat.

  Until I felt the fur melting away and opened my eyes.

  And where the beastly Allard had been a moment ago, there was now a man lying on the bed.

  And he was beautiful in a way that was very different from Lyrus’ perfection. For one thing, he shone. Literally. His hair was silver-gilt silk and long, framing a face that was pale and metallic looking. But as I stared in wonder, the silvery cast of his skin was replaced by a healthy pink blood-blush, and his hair faded to the color of ripe wheat in sunlight.

  It worked! I can’t believe it freaking worked.

  I have confidence in you, Hildegard, Allard said in my mind. And then he opened his eyes.

  “You have saved me,” he said. “I thought I would be cursed forever.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be cursing anyone for a long time,” I said.

  “I dreamt of that,” he said, “when you destroyed her Book of Secrets.”

  It hadn’t exactly been on purpose but if he wanted to give me credit, who was I to deny it?

  He threw off the coverlet, scattering the tiny fairies. He thanked them for watching him and dismissed them as he stood up.

  Oh my God.

  His body made Michelangelo’s David look like a pencil-dicked troll. He was slender, but his muscles were well-defined, without that exaggerated man-boob thing that so many muscular guys get. Shirtless Chris Hemsworth.

  That. Only better.

  And not to objectify, but Allard had a gorgeous cock.

  Not that I’d had a lot of real-life experience fo
r comparison, but my mother had taught art history and there’d been all those paintings of naked saints and martyrs to look at in her books.

  “How did you know how to break the curse?” Allard asked, as my gaze lingered at his waist.

  “You are not looking at my waist,” he said out loud with a faint smirk.

  I blushed all the way to my toes, although he spoke the truth.

  “It’s in all the stories,” I said. “True love’s kiss.”

  “The storytellers often lied,” he said. “they knew if they revealed the truth of what they saw while they were in the land of light there would be consequences.”

  He took a step toward me. “But happily, in this instance, they seem to have shared a truth.”

  “What kind of consequences?” I asked because I could feel his arousal even though he was not yet erect and even though we were not yet touching. That felt strange.

  But in a good way, because I was drowning in my own anticipation.

  “The fae would have moved on to other realms if they thought their secrets were being revealed.”

  “I’m glad they didn’t,” I said. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  Why are we still talking? I thought and a moment later we weren’t.

  Kissing is better when both people are participating and kissing Allard was worth the wait. His mouth tasted incredible, like honeyed wine.

  Fairies must have incredibly good dental hygiene I thought, wondering what my own mouth must taste like since I’d been away from a toothbrush for several days.

  Allard raised his head from mine and looked at me quizzically. I felt the ache of separation all the way down to my throbbing groin.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a Pisces. We’re really bad at this romance thing.”

  Perhaps you have not read enough fairy tales,” he said and then he kissed me again.

  And then we did other things…and all thought was lost in overlapping waves of sensation.

  He took me to his flower-covered bed and I realized I could feel his pleasure as keenly as my own. The experience was…transcendent.