Yuletide (Matilda Kavanagh Novels Book 3)

by Shauna Granger

  The wind stopped, and I imagined we were inside his cavern. His cloven feet thumped along the rock floor, and I braced myself, expecting him to drop me at any moment. But he continued forward. I was still in the bag, still shifting against his back, my stomach still threatening to give up whatever it had.

  Then we stopped.

  My skin prickled with sensation, and he muttered something too low for me to make out. My hair swirled, but without much room to move, it stuck to the bloody cuts on my face. I’d have to let go of one of the items in my hands to brush it away, so I just cringed and tried not to think about it.

  Something hit the ground with the sound of rustling and a soft thump. Krampus shifted me to the other shoulder, making me groan as my stomach rolled from the motion. The bag pulled tight above my head as he gripped it, and I knew he’d dropped his evil bundle of switches. Well, that was one less thing I had to worry about.

  We started forward again, and power rushed over me like a cool waterfall. We were walking through another portal. A portal inside his cavern. Heat rushed over me, plastering my bangs to my forehead with sweat. The sour stench of burnt sulfur surrounded me, crawled into my nose, and made my eyes water.

  Helheim.

  The sound of water was distant, but clear under the sounds of Krampus’s footsteps. A scream fueled by fear and panic crawled up my throat, but I bit it back and thrashed inside the bag. I bucked wildly, thrusting my feet against his back, trying to lengthen my body to pull free of his grip. My head pressed at the opening of the bag, pulling at my hair but not budging his hand.

  Krampus grunted as I kicked him again and again. His tail whipped at me. The lashes stung but didn’t cut through the bag, so I kept fighting. I couldn’t let him take me into Helheim. I couldn’t cross the river that was deafening when I listened for it. If I crossed it, I could never leave. I would be trapped in the Underworld forever.

  Krampus roared and swung me around so suddenly that I yelped in surprise and went still. He dropped the bag, and I hit the ground hard enough to cut the inside of my cheek as I bit down. Curses flooded my mouth.

  Frantic, like a bird desperate to get out of a net, I kicked and tore at the bag until my fingers found the opening. Wrenching the bag open, I gasped, sucking in a deep breath. Krampus was only a few feet away, seething as he glared at me. I kicked free of the bag, hearing my canister and bottle clatter against each other in the folds of the black fabric. I still didn’t know what they were, and I didn’t want to lose them in case I could use them.

  I leaned forward to grab the bag, but the noise Krampus made stopped me. With my arm extended and hand hovering, I looked up and saw the monster coming for me with clawed hands and bared fangs. Panic slammed into me like something alive with wings, and I called on what little power I had left.

  I touched the ground and screamed, “Tutor contego!” The spell flowed through me, burning my skin and making my stomach flip as it took what little energy I had left.

  But in less than a second, a circle formed around me in a brilliant blue light. Iridescent flames surrounded me and his bag, rising up to disappear, only to start again. Still on my hands and knees, I looked past the flames of my circle and saw Krampus’s face. His look of utter disbelief didn’t last long. In another moment, he was roaring and charging for me.

  I watched with my breath held. He was all teeth and claws and the promise of pain. Every little indiscretion I’d ever committed as a child built inside me, and in his red eyes, I saw my retribution finally come to get me. I screamed—I couldn’t stop the sound ripping from my throat until it burned. Krampus hit my circle, slamming into it hard enough to make my bones shake and my teeth rattle. I fell onto my back, the breath knocked out of me. But by some pure miracle, I didn’t touch the edge of the circle, even the tips of my hair just barely missed touching the blue flames. Had even the tiniest piece of my body touched the edge of the circle, it would have fallen, leaving me exposed and vulnerable.

  Lying on my back, staring into the black and unable to see the top of the mountain, I didn’t see that Krampus had flown backward as well, landing on his massive back and striking his head on the stone. I was teaching myself how to breathe again when his cloven feet scraped against the ground. His shadow fell over me, massive and dark, and the light of my circle threw his face into stark relief.

  Carefully, I pushed up from the floor, sitting up before getting to my feet. My baggy clothing hung from my body, the fabrics shaking as my body trembled. I didn’t have much power in me, and the pain of my fall made my back and head ache. It was a wonder I could stand without my knees buckling. But I did, and I lifted my chin, looking Krampus in the eye, and fisted my hands at my sides.

  “Tricky, tricky witch,” he said in a sing-song voice that no longer matched his impressive form. “But we have patience. We have all the patience in the world even if we have nothing else left in the three worlds. We sat in a cave for generations, waiting, waiting. We can wait out the strength of one tricky, tricky witch.”

  Swallowing against the bile rising in my throat, I fought to keep my face neutral. I didn’t have the power to keep the circle up forever. I had to find a way out, a way home, before my powers gave out. I laid my hands on the ground and closed my eyes. Portal magic was difficult and foreign to me. When I had made the portal at my apartment, I used a doorway because it gave Ronnie and me a focusing object with parameters, but that wasn’t necessary. If you truly understood portal magic, you could make a portal anywhere.

  I’d made a portal hours ago—I could do it again.

  My hands prickled with power, my nails aching as tiny bolts of light shot out of my fingers. Jaw clenched, brow pinched, and a stitch forming in my chest, I willed the floor to open beneath me and lead me home. The stone bit into my knees until pins and needles ran up my legs. My nails scraped and tore against the stone, but nothing happened. The ground beneath me remained whole.

  I would have screamed in frustration if it weren’t for the laughter echoing around me. When I opened my eyes, I found the monster of the mountain watching me and laughing. The rings of blue fire flickered as they rose and died only to start again, obscuring his face.

  “Not as tricky as you’d like,” he said, stepping close to the edge of my circle. The fur lining of his coat sizzled and curled into black points, making him step back from the power of my circle.

  “Trickier than you.” My voice sounded strange in the echoing cavern.

  His laugh stopped abruptly, and he fixed me with those cold, dead eyes. “Trickier, but we will see who has the power in the end. You cannot hold this circle forever, Matilda Kavanagh. Krampus has come for you.”

  ***

  I lost track of time, but it had to have been hours. A cold sweat had broken out over my body as I struggled to keep my circle in place. Once already I’d had to lay my fingers close to the edge and whisper the incantation to reinforce it. Krampus had sat up, his eyes full of the light of my flames and hope clear in his face, only to slump back when the circle didn’t fall. He kept muttering softly, but as long as he wasn’t singing, I knew I was okay. I still had some time to figure something out.

  A tiny part of me prayed that Ronnie would go to my apartment and find me missing, that somehow she could commune with Artie and figure out where I’d gone. But I wouldn’t just wait around hoping. All I had was myself, and I wasn’t going to die in the flames or rivers of Helheim. Not on my first good Christmas since my parents died.

  Snagging the bag, I reached inside, digging around for the items I’d dropped in my struggle to get free. My hands closed on the cool metal container and glass bottle. Shaking the bag off my arms, I examined the two containers. The canister was black without a label, and I heard my mother’s voice scolding me for that. Anything could be inside. I would have to open it to find out what it was, and I prayed it didn’t blow up in my face—literally.

  Setting the bottle down, I gripped the canister with both hands, held my breath, and twisted off
the lid. When nothing happened, I peeled one eye open and looked inside. It was full of Black Salt. My heart leapt. Black Salt was a powerful component of binding spells. The coarse black crystals reflected the light of my blue flames, glittering like tiny black diamonds.

  I replaced the lid carefully and set the canister in my lap, my legs crossed around it to keep it from tipping over. I picked up the bottle. It was squat, with a wide, round base and a long, thin neck. The glass was dark green, almost completely opaque. It was completely empty, but something about it made my fingers tingle. A power in the bottle was answering the weak power inside me. I touched the cork and found it coated in red wax so that it gripped the glass tighter than normal.

  I blinked when I recognized the bottle from my mother’s spelling supplies. It was a quintessence bottle, a bottle meant to hold aether. How I had grabbed that item out of all of the items in my cabinets, I didn’t know, but something inside me untwisted at the sight of it. If I was careful, that might be exactly what I needed not only to get out of there, but to keep Krampus from snatching another child forever.

  Hope bubbled inside me, but I tried to keep it down. I had a very difficult task ahead of me, and I couldn’t risk one little mistake. I was trying desperately to figure out how to use the salt and bottle when a noise struck my ear. It started out low, so I couldn’t quite make it out, but it became louder and louder until my ears were ringing with it.

  Krampus was singing.

  He got to his feet and turned slowly to face me, his red eyes alive with the light of hate and anger. His lips moved as the lyrics traveled across the distance between us. “You better watch out.” He took a step toward me. “You better not cry.” Closer still. “You better not pout.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to block out his voice. My mind raced. I could attack him with the Black Salt and cast a binding spell, but I would have to drop my circle to do it.

  “Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.”

  His voice was terribly close. I opened my eyes and looked at him. He was standing close enough to my circle that the blue flames reflected in his eyes, making them nearly white with light.

  He was finished singing. He roared, the sound loud enough to knock me over had I not been sitting on the ground. As it was, I had to cover my ears and duck my head, a whimper pushing through my clenched teeth. A force struck me somewhere in the middle, nearly making me topple over. I opened my eyes to see Krampus reeling back and rushing my circle again. Wordless, animalistic noises fell from him with every unsuccessful blow. His fists pounded against the shield, the flames scorching his hands and filling the air with the stench of burning flesh and fur.

  Every blow against my shield was a strike against me. My body shook with the effort to keep my shield and circle in place as he hit me, pain reverberating through my connection. I groaned as my stomach burned. I didn’t dare look down, for fear that the sight of any wounds would weaken my resolve.

  He was going to break my circle and take what little power I had left. My fingers ached with the need to do something, to use power to protect myself, but I just didn’t have enough. I held my breath and steeled myself against the coming pain as Krampus threw himself at my circle again. My teeth chattered, and my head ached.

  Carefully, I got to my feet, clutching the canister of Black Salt in both hands. I’d set the quintessence bottle on the black bag, hoping it would be safe there until I needed it. My jagged nails fit under the lid of the canister, ready to pry it off. As soon as I threw the salt, my circle would fall, and I would be face to face with the monster of my childhood. I repeated the spell over and over in my head—I would only have one chance to get it right. If I stumbled over even one syllable, all would be lost.

  Krampus pounded against my circle of power. I took half a step back to steady myself. I was starting to see spots as my body rattled with effort and pain. The lid of the canister started to slide off, the scent of the salt drifting out to mix with the stench of burning flesh. I would succeed or die—I just prayed either was quick.

  “Enough.”

  The word reverberated around us, buffeting my ears and making me duck as though a cloud of bats had swarmed me. Krampus froze, his fist still raised, his mouth twisted into an ugly snarl, but his eyes had gone completely blank. The word hadn’t been yelled, but it held the power of the ages, and I found myself wanting to drop to one knee.

  Krampus blinked and met my eyes. He towered over me, but in that moment when his eyes met mine, I saw a scared little child.

  The sound of cloth sliding on rock slithered through the silence. Power radiated behind me, pressing at my back. In the next moment, Krampus fell back as though struck, and a gust of energy went through my circle, though it didn’t fall, thank all the gods.

  Since Krampus was no longer beating against my circle, I found that I could breathe again, and the pain in my core abated. But I was sure, more than anything in my life, more than my five-year-old-self knew there was a monster in the closet, that I did not want to turn around. I did not want to know who was walking up behind me. I did not want to know who’d spoken that one word that had stopped a raging monster.

  But I had to look.

  With more courage than I thought I had left, I turned, the canister in my hands nearly forgotten. Standing at the edge of the bridge leading into the mouth of the Underworld was a goddess. Great and terrible, her long black hair hung around her face like curtains or raven’s wings. Her grey robes, tattered and worn, hung from her bony shoulders. A gust of wind rippled the hem of her robes, and I saw her long, grey toes. In one gnarled hand was a black staff that bore her weight. Though she seemed frail and wizened, I felt power radiating off her.

  Krampus shifted behind me, but I dared not look at him. In the presence of the goddess of the Underworld, he seemed so trivial. He stepped forward. I could just see him out of the corner of my eye, and he tilted his head in an almost-bow. He spoke just one word.

  “Mother.”

  Chapter 22

  Hel, goddess of the Underworld, stood before us. Her power was like nothing I had ever felt, and I knew I never would again. Though her power passed through my circle without breaking it, I knew that was by her will alone. If she wanted to, she could break my circle and let her son rip me to shreds.

  And that was exactly what I was waiting for.

  I clutched my canister of Black Salt, feeling the cool metal become warm under my sweaty hands.

  I couldn’t understand how she was standing there, in front of me. It was said that once anyone—even a god—crossed the river of the Underworld, they could never, ever leave. How then was she standing there, her deep black eyes staring at us across the river?

  Though my mind raced with questions and screamed at me to break my circle and run, I couldn’t look away from her eyes. They peered out of her sallow face, completely black with no irises, no pupils, and not even a sliver of white. Looking into her eyes was like looking into the mouth of Hell, and I felt myself pitching forward, threatening to fall forever.

  “Mother,” Krampus said again, daring to step forward.

  “Enough,” she said again, the word hitting us both.

  But it was her hand, raised casually so that her sleeve belled at her elbow, that stopped Krampus. Her power struck him, and he collapsed to his knees, his arms around his waist and his head bowed forward as a whimper of pain escaped him. My jaw dropped, and I managed to look away from the goddess at her son on the ground. Her power was so infinite, so pure, she used no effort in controlling it.

  “Mother, I beg you,” Krampus said, his voice strained under Hel’s power.

  Her hand was still in front of her, the power emanating from it holding him on his knees. He lifted his face and held out his hands, begging her, but Hel would not relent.

  “It is finished, my son.” She was almost whispering, but her voice filled the world around us—even the flames of my circle flickered under the weight of it.

  I thought I’d bee
n struggling under Krampus’s rage, but that was nothing compared to this. I had never wanted to meet a god, and now I knew that I was right about that.

  “No,” Krampus said, his voice weaker. “No, I have my power again. The children, they believe again. I can be what I once was. Please, let me finish this.”

  “You are broken,” she said. “You will never be what you once were. A handful of terrified children will not bring my son back to me. This is finished. It is better that we end it now. If you continue on, you will lose everything, even your legend.”

  Krampus opened his mouth to argue, but something about her words stopped him. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came. His eyes were wide and pleading and, to my great surprise, filling with tears. A small part of me pitied him.

  “But I have brought her here for you, my greatest tribute,” he said, flinging one arm out to indicate me, effectively destroying that little bit of pity I’d found for him.

  I wanted to rip his tongue from his throat.

  “I am no longer interested in your tributes and offerings. My son died a long time ago, trapped in a mountain by mortals.”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  I heard the note of anger in his voice. It was a spark of heat that changed that simple word into a curse. He got to his feet, grunting and struggling against her power, but he was standing again.

  “Yes,” she said.

  That was all the warning she would give me, but her intent washed over me. I was ready. Her hand cut through the air and sent a gust of power through my shield and over my body, filling me. Power flooded my body so that I became electrified—bolts of power flashed all over me, almost lifting me off the ground.