A Very Armitage Christmas

by Eliot Grayson

I came inside him, my whole body stiffening and my claws popping out to pierce the blankets and the bed. His throat tightened around me again as he swallowed desperately, but some of my come trickled out of the corner of his mouth.

  I pulled out and rolled off of him, landing hard on my back, my chest heaving. Fuck.

  Arik shifted next to me and let out something between a gasp and a helpless whimper.

  I turned my head and looked at him.

  I’d wrecked him. Saliva and come glistened on his swollen lips and on his cheek, and tear tracks ran silvery down his temple. I looked further down. His half-hard cock lay against his hip, and come spattered his skin.

  He’d finished while I’d fucked his throat like a feral beast. He hadn’t even touched himself.

  I rolled over again, cupping his face in my hands and kissing that slack, well-used mouth, my tongue delving into him and tasting where my cock had been a few moments before. Making him mine all over again. His lips felt puffy and soft; tender, and probably bruised. He tasted like everything sweet in the world, like he belonged to me. Arik lay pliant under me, his breathing starting to slow.

  When I stopped at last, his eyes fluttered open.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to.”

  I knew he hadn’t. And I knew he could probably count on one hand the number of times he’d apologized to anyone for anything. Hell, this might be the first time ever. And…that had been a hell of a make-up blowjob. I could forgive a lot for that. Zombies, even.

  Still. Apologies, blowjobs…he’d still put my pack at risk by fucking around.

  “That’s not an accident that would happen to most people, sweetheart.”

  He bit his lip, nodded, and turned his face away a little.

  Almost enough to hide the tear that slid out of the corner of his eye.

  But not quite. And if I let one more come out, I’d be lower than pond scum.

  “Have I ever mentioned I really hate being bored?” I leaned down and kissed the corner of his mouth, licking away a drop of come. “I hate council meetings. I’m sick of talking about the fucking junkyard. I never get to do anything interesting anymore.” I kissed him again, watching him carefully. Yeah, that sweet corner of his lips had started to turn up, just a tiny bit. “I beheaded a zombie so hard that the head flew into a tree all the way across the clearing. Thwack. It was awesome. And I killed more than Ian did.”

  Arik finally turned his head back a little. Both corners of his mouth had twitched up, and his eyes gleamed with something soft, a little sweet, a little wicked, and all my Arik.

  “They’re not zombies, they’re revenants,” he said, and sighed. “If you’re going to brag about beheading them, at least use the correct terminology.”

  “You can educate me after I’m done fucking you. If you still have the energy.”

  His eyebrows rose, and now he was definitely smiling. “You mean if you still have the energy.”

  I nudged my almost-hard cock against his thigh. “You give me strength,” I said, with only a little bit of sarcasm. “And revenants. Only the best for your fearless leader.”

  He laughed, wrapped his legs around my hips, and pulled me down to his mouth. “Give me your knot and we’ll call it even.”

  He never got around to educating me before he passed out cold, but he did get my knot. I didn’t complain.

  Chapter 4

  Ian

  Waking up to Nate nearly always made me happy.

  Waking up to Nate shouting, “Oh, fucking shit, there’s more of them,” after a night full of killing zombies in the woods?

  Not so much.

  I popped out of bed like I’d been electrocuted. Usually I woke up first, but apparently Nate had gotten up to piss or something; the sky outside the windows was still pitch-black. Nate had plastered himself to the bigger window near the front door, and he turned to me with his hair all ruffled from sleep, pillow creases on his cheek, and a look of abject horror on his face.

  I peered out the window. The deep shadows of trees across the clearing, faint moonlight reflecting from snow…and four shambling bodies, in a state of advanced decay, leaving churned-up, messy snow trails in their wake.

  One of them had left a skeletal hand too, it looked like.

  Fucking gross.

  “Where the fuck are they coming from?” Nate hissed. “We killed them all, right?”

  I shot him a glance. “We?”

  Nate huffed and puffed for a second, and then grumbled, “Sounded like Matthew got most of the other ones, anyway, so I don’t know what you’re getting all self-righteous about.”

  I chose to ignore that, thank you very much. “Speaking of.” I went over to the nightstand and found my phone, tapping in the second preset for my brother. As it rang, I asked Nate, “Your wards are going to keep them out of the pack house, right? For sure?”

  For once, Nate didn’t bitch about his abilities being questioned. “Yeah,” he said seriously. “I really am sure. I promise.” God, I loved him. He could be such a little sharp-tongued, ornery bastard, especially when someone didn’t give him the professional respect he definitely deserved.

  But he knew all the pack’s children were bunked down in the pack house for the night, and he didn’t take that lightly. I was so fucking lucky to have him.

  I would’ve told him so, but Matt answered the phone. “What now?”

  “Four zombies in front of my house,” I said succinctly. “Who the fuck knows how many more there are. And these ones are headed right for you, just like the others were. I thought we’d gotten them all, or I wouldn’t have come home and gone to bed!”

  After we’d gotten back from killing the first batch of zombies, it’d taken a couple of hours for Nate to put the finishing touches on the wards. Jennifer and I, plus a few others, had shifted and done a run of the woods to check things out, and when we got back Matt had finally reappeared from upstairs with no explanation for his absence except that he’d been with Arik — not that he needed to explain. He reeked of sex, the bastard. We’d regrouped in the back yard and decided the threat had probably passed, since we hadn’t seen anything else. We’d still had all the vulnerable members of the pack spend the night in the pack house to be safe, but everyone able-bodied without any kids had gone to their own cottages and cabins, since the pack house was crowded enough already.

  “Fuck,” Matt said. “Hang on.” He’d covered the phone with his hand or something, because what he said to Arik came through really muffled, but I heard Arik say something in reply before Matt came back. “You still there?”

  “Yeah, what does he say we do about it? Because I’m not super crazy about chasing who the fuck knows how many more of these things through the woods at ass o’clock in the morning.”

  “On Christmas Eve,” Nate piped up from beside me, where he’d been leaning in and eavesdropping. “Seriously. Tell Arik to get his shit together, or I won’t let him have any pie. Tell Arik to get his shit together or there won’t be any pie, because I’ll be too busy trying not to get eaten myself to bake some.”

  More muted argument came through the phone. “Jesus, Matt, fucking put the phone on speaker,” I said.

  Some rustling, and then a beep, and then I heard them loud and clear. “…need to figure out where they’re coming from,” Arik was saying, sounding incredibly irritable for someone who was the source of the goddamn problem. What did he have to be pissed about? “I can cast a general spell, but it’d help a lot if I had a directional target, at the very least. And it’d help to know how many there are. It’s something I can only do well if they’re all in one place, so I’ll be punting a little.”

  Great. Punting a little and dealing with zombies didn’t sound like a winning combo.

  “You should come back to the house,” Matt said. “We can regroup, form a perimeter —”

  The porch steps creaked, something thudded, and a low moaning sounded from out front. “Ian, I think we have company,” Nate said, e
dging further from the door and closer to me.

  “What?” Matt demanded sharply. “I thought you said they were heading for the pack house!”

  “Yeah, and one of them took a detour,” I snapped. “To my front door. We’ll get there when we can. Arik, these won’t, like, turn us into zombies too if they bite us, right?”

  “No, but it’ll be a nasty, festering wound that might kill you anyway, and if enough of them get on you at once they’ll take you down in a pack and rip your flesh off your bones.” Arik cleared his throat. “Maybe avoid that.”

  “Thanks a million. We’ll be there soon.” I hung up. Thanks for nothing. Fuck.

  Nate stood stock-still beside me, biting his lip and staring at the door. Something hit it hard enough to rattle it in the frame, and Nate jumped about a foot in the air.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “This isn’t — I really, really don’t like horror movies. Which is kind of ironic, considering my life so far. I’m the guy who gets eaten. I mean, have you seen a zombie movie? No one in skinny jeans survives past the first twenty min—”

  I put a hand over his mouth, wrapped his waist in my other arm, and pulled him close. I stared him down, as he peered at me wide-eyed over my fingers. “Have you considered wearing normal pants?” A muted, outraged mmph came through my hand, and his eyes glittered with outrage. I smiled at him. Good. If he could get annoyed with me, he wouldn’t be so scared. “Also, no matter what pants you’re wearing, your mate’s an alpha werewolf. You’re mine. I’m the only one who gets to have my mouth on you. Understood?”

  Nate nodded, and I took my hand away. The zombie groaned, scratched at the door, and started thumping again, rattling the door handle. I’d locked it. But still. Not super reassuring, even for me. I liked enemies I could kill, and things someone had already killed once coming back at me gave me the creeps.

  “Get dressed,” I told him, and added, “Maybe skip the skinny jeans. I’m going to do the same, and then we’ll figure out how to get out of here without making a mess on the floor inside. The porch is going to be bad enough.”

  “That porch needs to be condemned anyway,” Nate muttered. “Some guts might brighten it up. Maybe even improve its structural stability.”

  But he went to the dresser and started pulling out clothes, at least. I stuck my tongue out at his back and dug around on the floor for my pants.

  ***

  Getting to the pack house, it turned out, was the easy part.

  I had Nate climb up on my back and hold on, grabbed the machete I’d thankfully brought back to our little house with me, and wrenched the door open, kicking the zombie out of the way hard enough to fling it off the porch and send it skidding into the snow a couple of yards away.

  “Hang on,” Nate said. “Let me lock the door again.”

  He was right, but I still gritted my teeth at the delay.

  When I heard the click, I ran. I beheaded the zombie I’d kicked without so much as a pause, and then took off full-speed for the pack house, zig-zagging around a couple more zombies without stopping to do anything about them.

  I needed to get Nate safely behind his wards. Then I’d deal with them. But no fucking way was I risking him in close combat, not when he didn’t have a shifter’s healing abilities and stamina.

  The pack house came into view, lit up like the Christmas tree Nate hadn’t had a chance to set up yet. I headed to the back. Matt, Jennifer, and a few others of the pack’s experienced fighters were prowling, mostly behind the wards. Arik crouched down near the back steps, fiddling with a big bowl, a small fire, and a pile of random magic crap in bags and boxes. Luke, who was built like a Mack truck and a lot faster than he looked, along with Andy, who could also hold his own, had gone out from behind the warding line and were heading off to the cottages down the hill. No one had stayed down there for the night who couldn’t take care of themselves, but maybe someone had called and said they had zombies at their front doors, too, and wanted a little backup.

  And then I looked away from Luke and Andy toward the decorations I’d put up the night before, and I saw red. Not just the red of that fucking inflatable Santa’s goddamn suit and hat, but the searing blood-red of rage.

  Two zombies had made it to the Santa, which sat right outside the warding line.

  And the fuckers were trying to eat him! I’d spent nearly an hour of my life putting that fucking thing up!

  I stopped for a millisecond, just long enough to drop Nate off my back and safely behind the wards. He let out a startled eep.

  “Motherfucker!” I shouted, running for the Santa-eating zombies. “What the fuck!”

  I swung my machete hard, turning one zombie into two bite-sized pieces, but I was too damn late. The other bit into the side of the Santa’s leg, ripping a giant hole out of it.

  The hiss of escaping air and the zombie’s moans blended together, and the Santa dented, tilted, and deflated, his face morphing from a Christmas grin into a weird, distorted grimace.

  The zombie turned to face me, its half-rotted burial gown fluttering and its disintegrating jaws wide open, showing me a set of yellow teeth and a blackened lump of tongue. I swung the machete before it could get close enough to snap at me, sending its head tumbling off…right onto the deflating body of Santa Claus.

  Oh, fuck. If the zombies didn’t kill me, Nate would.

  “More coming out of the woods!” Matt’s voice, loud enough to echo all the way down the hill to anyone still at the cottages.

  I spun around. Yeah, more, all right. In the first glimmering of pre-dawn, the shambling mass pushing its way out of the woods looked like something out of a nightmare.

  Most people’s nightmares. My normal life, apparently. Thank you, Matt, for mating a fucking half-competent necromancer. I drew a deep breath, took a firm grip on the machete — because my claws would work at least as well, but no way in fucking hell was I going to get zombie goo all over my claws, fucking gross — and got ready for the onslaught.

  “Get behind the wards, Ian!” Matt called out.

  “That may not work!” Nate’s voice, high and panicked. I glanced over my shoulder. He and Arik were working furiously together, now, and they both looked pale and grim. “I don’t think the wards will hold against that many hitting the line all at once. We were expecting a few random stragglers, bodies left by rogue vampires. Not — whatever the fuck this is!”

  “Turns out there was an old cemetery just beyond the edge of our territory,” Jennifer put in, as she circled to the side to cover Matt’s flank. “They stopped using it twenty years ago. Stephen’s the only one who remembered, and he forgot to tell us until we woke him up ten minutes ago.”

  “Well, that’s just fucking great,” Nate and Arik snarled — in perfect unison. They froze, stared at each other for a second, turned bright red, and went back to work without another word.

  “How the hell do they still have flesh on them?” I demanded. “Shouldn’t they just be skeletons by now?”

  “Embalming’s a wonderful thing,” Jennifer said with a shrug. “I’m guessing this is less than half the cemetery’s inhabitants, the better-preserved and more recent ones. The rest are probably rattling their bones back at the graveyard.”

  “Well, I’m staying here,” I said. “My job’s to be the first line of defense, right?” And I’d be damned if so much as a single zombie got past me, no matter what Nate said about the wards being able to handle a few at a time. Nate was right behind me, defenseless except for his finger lightning. And that rocked, but it also wouldn’t help if he had zombies all over him.

  Matt appeared at my shoulder. “Like fuck it is. At least not on your own.”

  I shot him a grin. “Fine, old man. Let’s see how many you get this time, when it’s an even playing field.”

  “More than you, guaranteed, pipsqueak.”

  I ignored that. I’d prove him wrong…and besides, we had a line of zombies bearing down on us, dozens of them, moaning and dragging their half-rotted
feet along through the snow, their jaws wide and full of filthy teeth.

  The sun broke the horizon, gilding bare, maggoty scalps and showing details that I — yeah, I could’ve lived forever without seeing some of what I was seeing.

  And then they were on us. Matt shouted encouragement, and the pack’s fighters jumped into the fray. It was chaos, zombies coming at us one after the other, limbs flying, machetes whirling, chunks of flesh and bone getting flung in every direction. One of them latched onto my shoulder and bit down hard, a throbbing, awful pain, and when Matt’s machete severed its head, the head stayed attached. He knocked it flying with the flat of his blade and then spun to take down another. Luke was mowing them down like a tank, and everyone else was holding their own, but they kept on coming. I got separated from Matt, hacking and chopping — and then a zombie lunged away right as my machete lodged in its spine, another one wrapped its arms around me from behind, and the machete wrenched out of my hands.

  I heard Matt shouting, “Arik, now! Do it now! We can’t wait!”

  I lashed out with my claws, raking them through the pile of zombies surrounding me. I threw them off as fast as they could come at me, but I had bites on both arms, both legs, and one on my ribs that had gone down to the bone.

  And I’d started to feel it. Those weren’t normal bites. Maybe I wouldn’t transform into anything, but I wasn’t going to be feeling great.

  If I lived.

  Nate. I wanted to see Nate. Another one came at me, rictus grin wide open, and I shoved my claws through its head, whirling to pitchfork it into two more of its friends.

  I saw Jennifer going down under a pile of zombies, too, but I couldn’t get to her. Andy struggled to her side.

  And then a bomb went off.

  Or at least that’s what it felt like. A wave of magic, something powerful and strange and ear-splittingly purple, boomed through the whole scene, knocking zombies down like bowling pins and ripping them into pieces.

  I fell to my knees. Whammy, as Nate would say. Fuck, Nate. Had he done that, or Arik? Pinkish sunlight fell on churned snow stained red with blood and filthy black with whatever fluids came out of the undead. I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me. Shaking my head didn’t help, only made the ringing worse.