Demons of Christmas Past: A Hidden Novella

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “Oh shit,” one of them growled.

  “I thought you said this bitch was out of commission,” another of them said. All of them glanced at the largest demon. This would be their leader. I pulled the knife out of my pocket and charged him. He did try to fight back.

  The thing about my powers, especially since that night….I’m crazy strong now. Before, I used to have to work myself up to really pack a punch. Now, it was like I had access to that rage all the time. So while I refused to use my fire or other creepier powers, when I hit someone, they fucking felt it.

  One punch had his nose shattered and blood coursing down his face.

  A swipe of my knife across his throat ended him.

  Efficient. That’s me.

  One of the others tried to jump me, but it was useless. I felt my rage growing, and, with it, my power soared. I turned, kicked out hard at the one who had tried to jump me, and he went crashing into the side of the building. While he was still groggy, I stalked over to him, twisted his neck, ending him.

  The third was coming for me, and I scanned the area for the fourth. He’d ducked around the building, and was coming up behind Brennan now.

  “Bren, behind you,” I shouted, not thinking, just reacting, trying to make sure he wouldn’t be cut down by the cowardly demon behind him. He turned, started fighting the demon.

  He doesn’t hit as hard as I do, but he does all right, I guess.

  I turned back to my demon, who was still stupidly trying to get the upper hand. I broke into his mind, shattered it, and watched him fall to the ground, empty.

  When I finished, I looked over just in time to see Brennan finishing up with his demon. He met my eyes, smiled.

  A bunch of demons (in their demon forms, no less) would definitely raise questions. I focused for a moment, then shot white-hot fire at each of the four bodes. They were incinerated on contact, and all that was left was ashes, smoking, steaming on the formerly pristine snow.

  The last time I’d done that…I forced the thought back. I hated it. Hated what I was and what I could do. I felt like I was doing to throw up the dinner I’d just eaten. I balled my hands into fists, trying to keep it together.

  Wordlessly, Brennan pulled me into his arms, his presence comforting and confusing all at the same time.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured against my hair. “Do what you need to do. Scream. Hit something. Do it.”

  “I need to get out of here,” I said, finally pushing myself out of the comfort and warmth of his embrace. “Let’s go.”

  He nodded, then we turned to the young woman, who was crying harder now. Fear rolled off of her, almost overwhelming. I put my sunglasses back on, then I untied her blindfold.

  She stared at me, whimpered. “It’s okay,” I said, as soothingly as I could. “You’re safe now.” I reached behind her head and unknotted the scarf they had gagging her, and Brennan cut the ropes that held her hands. She was weeping more openly now in relief, the aftereffects of her fear. I took my coat off, insisted she pull it on over her pajamas.

  “What were those things?” she asked me, eyeing the ashes on the snow around us.

  “Demons,” I said.

  She just stared at me. I’d have to erase her memories. This would be too traumatic for her otherwise.

  “Where do you live? We can take you home,” I said softly.

  She told me the neighborhood, and Brennan and I walked her to the truck. She got in, scooting to the middle, then I climbed in and Brennan closed the door behind me, then climbed in the driver’s side and drove off.

  She was afraid sitting between us. Which was actually pretty smart, considering we’d just beat up four nightmares. “What are you?” she asked after a while. I noticed her glancing at me. “You’re her, aren’t you?”

  “Who?” I asked, knowing what I’d hear.

  “The Angel. I was lost, and you found me,” she said.

  “Well. I had some help,” I said.

  “You’re hard to keep up with,” Brennan said, grinning.

  “But you’re her,” the woman insisted.

  I glanced past her to Brennan, met his eyes briefly. “She is,” he said.

  “I knew it. I knew you were the real thing. I was standing there, hoping you’d show. I knew I was dead if you weren’t real….”

  I could barely breathe. The Angel. Savior of lost girls. The name felt like more of a joke now than ever.

  I nodded politely, and we drove the rest of the way in silence. We got out of the car, and she gave me my coat back. As she hugged me in thanks, I worked my way into her mind.

  “You never saw your abductors. You remember being saved. You remember meeting me. It will be so,” I said softly, and I felt the instant my power took hold.

  She looked a little dazed as she walked away, but she made her way into the house and closed the door behind her. Brennan and I glanced at each other, then he opened the passenger door for me, and we drove off in the opposite direction, heading toward the church on Gratiot.

  “Were they just messing with her or….?” I asked him. “That almost looked like some kind of ritual.”

  “It was,” he answered. “We’ve seen a few of them over the years. Christmas time is big for them, something about all of the power of faith in the air or something. Usually, they’re trying to open a way into the Nether.” He glanced over at me. “Good to hear your voice again.”

  “Feels weird to use it,” I said, staring out the window. “I only did it because you were in trouble. Again,” I said.

  He laughed. “Yeah. You saved my ass. I owe you.”

  “You don’t. I’m not losing anyone else.”

  We reached the church, and he found a parking spot not terribly far away. It was just after midnight. We’d be walking in late. I hated walking in any where late. It felt like everyone was staring at you. Probably because they were, thinking “what is with these assholes?”

  I know, because I can hear them.

  We walked up the front walk toward the church steps, the stone facade of the church imposing in the snowy night, the air blissfully silent around us. I looked up, watched feathery snowflakes falling from the black sky.

  “Molly,” Brennan said, stopping in his tracks. I stopped walking, turned to look at him.

  “Yeah?”

  “I owe you an apology.”

  “No you don’t,” I said.

  “I do.” He paused, took a breath. Nervousness came from him, washing over me and setting my stomach in twists. “Back with the Puppeteer…”

  I waved him off. “Stop. You weren’t in control. We’ve done this already.” Kind of.

  “Not that.” He met my eyes. “Physically, she was in control. As much as I hate to have to admit that, as much as I hate that I wasn’t strong enough to fight her off to save you from that…that was her.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re still a little afraid of me,” he said. “And you’re not afraid of much. Not anymore.”

  “I’m not afraid. Not really,” I said softly. “I know you’d never hurt me. The memories of it are….they’re bad.” Nightmares. Hatred in the eyes of someone I loved and trusted.

  “You’ve had too much bad,” he said.

  “But it wasn’t your fault.”

  “No. That part wasn’t. It was the rest of it.” He stopped, looked up into the sky as if hoping for the right words, or strength, or forgiveness. “I heard everything she said to you,” he finally said, his voice quiet in the silent night.

  “I know.”

  “When she said…not just that I am in love with you, but that I hated you too, that I was angry with you because shifters are proud and we don’t take rejection well.”

  I couldn’t answer. I’d turned her words over in my mind too many times, had them seared into my psyche. I just looked at him.

  “I never hated you. Ever.”

  I let out a breath I wasn’t aware I’d been holding.

  “I was angry with you. Stupidly,
assholishly angry. And I did wonder, over and over again, why you chose him over me. Why I wasn’t good enough. Seeing you two together….” he trailed off, and his emotions were a mess.

  “I know you were angry.”

  “I know you know,” he said. “I was wrong to be that way.”

  “You can’t help the way you feel. And you and I…there’s always been weirdness there. We both know it.”

  He watched me. “You’re letting me off too easy here, Molly. I was an asshole about you and Nain.”

  “Am I supposed to hate you for being hurt? Because that’s what it all comes down to, and I’m not going to be pissed off at you for feeling hurt, so stop it,” I said, turning toward the church. “You’re being stupidly hard on yourself about this. You’re the one person I know would never hurt me, ever. And that’s with the ability to read your emotions completely, more clearly than I can read anyone else’s.”

  He looked away from me. “You can really feel me that clearly?”

  “Yeah. I really can. Nain was tricky to read. Most people, I get a general sense. You? I can read you like a book, Brennan. And so, yeah. I know you were hurt. And I know you were angry. And I know you love me, and I even know that you want me.”

  “Oh, Christ,” he muttered, turning away from me.

  I put my hand on his arm, turned him back. “I’m not saying this to embarrass you. I’m not going to lie. I feel every emotion you have. Every. Damn. Thing. So I know all that, and because I know how you feel, I know you’d never, ever hurt me. This isn’t me being blind to your faults. This is me telling you I know you, Brennan Matthews.”

  He stared at me, then looked away. “Well, this is awkward.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and to my surprise, he laughed.

  “If I try to hide what I’m feeling…”

  “Good luck with that,” I said. And we started walking toward the church doors again. We entered as quietly as possible, and Brennan spotted Ada and Stone several pews ahead, pointed them out to me. We squeezed in at the end, me between Stone and Brennan. We listened to Father Balester’s homily, then to the choir.

  “Is there an amulet or something?” Brennan leaned over and whispered to me.

  “No.”

  A few minutes later “What about a spell? Could Ada spell me?”

  “No.”

  After that, “what about-”

  “You can’t hide it from me, Brennan.”

  “How do you know?”

  I shrugged. “I just know.” I met his gaze. “We’ll deal with it. We have been already. At least we’ll never have stupid misunderstandings with me thinking you hate me when you’re actually just tired or something.”

  He sighed. Not happy about it, but resigned. “This is so embarrassing.”

  “You already know I could do it,” I hissed.

  “Not like that. Not with me.”

  “For the record, you do a pretty damn decent job reading me, too,” I whispered, thinking of all the times he’d seemed to know what I wanted to ask, or that I needed coffee, or that I was cold or tired in the past few weeks.

  He didn’t answer, and I sensed the tiniest bit of guilt coming from him. I listened more as Father Balester started to talk again.

  “None of you are Catholic,” I whispered to Brennan when everyone stood for a prayer.

  “We’re not,” he whispered. “But neither is Father Balester, technically. And you’re distracted or you’d realize that his congregation isn’t exactly normal either.”

  I focused. I’d felt Ada and Stone’s power signatures, and even those were barely noticeable to me so close to Brennan — he was strong, and his power had a steady pulse to it that it was easy for me to home in on. But when I tried harder, I felt more. Vampires, shifters, witches, warlocks. I glanced around.

  I nearly laughed.

  Midnight Mass. Christmas Eve. And this idyllic, old Catholic church was full of nightmares. Brennan caught my gaze, grinned a little.

  “So we’re not, obviously, Catholic or even Christian,” he said, leaning down toward me again. “But even monsters can come together one night a year and celebrate the important things. That’s really all this night is about, isn’t it?”

  The prayer ended, and we sat. In a normal Catholic church, this would be the part where people line up for the Eucharist. Instead, Father Balester walked down into the aisle between the pews, looked around.

  “Friends. We come together tonight to share in the joy and spirit of this season. Love, generosity.” He paused, scanned the crowed. His gaze landed on me, and he gave me a small smile. “Hope. Hope is eternal, and even in our darkest hour, the light of hope shines.” He looked away, glanced around again. “Depending on your faith or lack of, that hope can come in any form. It can be a Savior who died so that you would have eternal life. It can be a parent who protected you from the darkness, friends who care for you through the nightmares of life on Earth. Sometimes, it comes in the form of an Angel, or in the form of a demon.”

  He paused, seeming deep in thought. “And sometimes, it is what’s inside you. A fire that burns so brightly it chases away the worst of the darkness.” He met my eyes again. “That fire is worth nurturing, because without it, you will be lost to the darkness.” It was as if everyone else in the church had faded away, as if the priest-who-was-not-a-priest was talking only to me, in a voice older than anything in existence. “You must go on. Because the darkness will always be there. Evil will always exist. And there is so much more in store for you, lives untold, adventures you can’t even imagine.”

  He finally looked away from me, and I took a shaky breath.

  “And that is why we come together on this Holy night. To remind ourselves and each other that the fight is worth it. We live our lives, and those of you in this church know better than anyone, what it is to battle the darkness within.”

  “May your light guide you through your darkest hour.”

  “Blessed be.”

  And with that, the priest smiled, and took a small bow to the congregation. With a smile, the man disappeared, and a cold wind blew through the church and out the doors.

  “He’s always loved his dramatic exits,” Ada said as everyone started standing up, pulling on coats and gloves.

  “What is he?” I asked. “I mean, really. He’s not a demon. He’s not any type of being I’ve ever met. He’s not even like Eunomia and her sisters,” I said quietly, remembering my friend, a being from myth. She and her sisters escorted the souls of the dead to whatever came after. “His power is completely different.”

  Ada and Stone both shrugged. “He’s never bothered to explain it to us,” Ada said.

  Stone nodded. “We figure it’s his story to tell, if he ever wants to.”

  Brennan stood aside so I could walk out of the pew. “I’ve never met anyone else like him,” he said, and Ada and Stone agreed.

  “Yes, our priest friend is definitely one of a kind,” Ada said.

  We all made our way back to the loft. The streets were blanketed in snow, and it still came down in soft, feathery flakes. I spent most of the ride staring out the passenger side window, thinking about nothing and everything. “Holly Jolly Christmas” played as Brennan drove the truck toward the loft.

  “This took a lot out of you, didn’t it?” he asked after a while.

  “What?”

  “Talking. Being around everyone. Going out and not just kicking ass the entire time,” he said.

  “Well. There was some ass kicking involved,” I said, still looking out the window.

  “Yeah.”

  “This Christmas is hard enough with all we’ve lost. Especially you and Ada and Stone. Me sitting in my room or moping around wouldn’t help anyone.”

  “You lost a hell of a lot, too,” he said.

  “I did. But I never had a Christmas with him. You all did. You’re hurting, and I feel helpless to make any of you feel better.”

  We drove in silence for a while. The going was slow, the r
oads slippery. Eventually, we pulled into the parking garage and made our way inside. Ada and Stone had already gone up to their rooms, and the loft was dark and quiet, illuminated only by the glowing lights of the Christmas tree and the city outside.

  I shrugged out of my coat and kicked my shoes off. Brennan went to the kitchen, and I went into the living room. A few minutes later, he came into the living room and pressed a hot mug of cocoa into my hand, then sat down beside me.

  The imps were both laying on their backs near the tree, looking up at it.

  We sat together in silence for a long time, each lost in our own memories, our own thoughts.

  “Merry Christmas, Molly,” Brennan finally said said, his voice yet another light in the darkness.

  “Merry Christmas,” I whispered, and we sat through the rest of the night together, waiting for the dawn of a new day.

  * * *

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  About the Author

  Colleen Vanderlinden is the author of the Hidden and Hidden: Soulhunter urban fantasy series, the Copper Falls paranormal romance series, the StrikeForce superhero series, and the Exile science fiction/fantasy series. She lives in northern Michigan with her husband, kids, four insane cats and a demonic basset hound. You can find more about Colleen's books on her website, www.colleenvanderlinden.com, or on Facebook or Twitter (@C_Vanderlinden).

  Books by

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  The Hidden Series

  Book One: Lost Girl

  Book Two: Broken

  Book Three: Home

  Book Four: Strife

  Book Five: Nether

  Hidden Series Novellas

  Forever Night

  Earth Bound