Page 5 of The Holly King's Sacrifice

It’s not a paralytic; it’s a translator.

“Witness how the foolish people of this world surrender their women!” the Holly King roars.

The men—and women—around the bonfire laugh, some bending over they’re laughing so hard. I sit in horror, wondering what I’m doing here, if I’m meant to be made an example of.

Will I be next on that pyre?

“They think that their false gods will return and save them,” the Holly King continues, “and so they forsake their young people and leave them todie, all while we push back the forces of the angelic forces!”

The others cheer again, and I stare up at the Holly King. He doesn’t pay any attention to me—except when I scramble away once again, only for him to jerk me backwards by the hair.

“Stay,” he growls, his silver eyes blazing in the dark sockets of his skull.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Something strange flashes in those alien eyes, but he turns back to his people so quickly that I can’t quite make out what it means.

“And it begs the question,” the Holly King says. “Is it we who are the primitives, or they? Do the people of Earth deserve a second chance, when they have been domesticated by misguided faith?” He looks toward me. “Our Snow Queen will show us what her people deserve.”

Drums pound around the bonfire, starting suddenly and without warning. I keep wondering what they’re going to do with me—if they’re going to tie me to a post like whatever poor soul is burning on the pyre right now—but the Holly King takes a seat as the drums sound, and as demons laugh beneath the dais.

“Rest now,” he says, his voice echoing in his skull. “You will need it for the days ahead.”

I swallow hard. “Can I at least have something to wear?”

He stares at me, unblinking, those silver eyes unreadable beneath the skull.

“No,” he says. “You have not yet earned our respect.”

I curl into a ball, ashamed of how I’m put on display.

But the Holly King doesn’t seem to care.

3

Aspen

Thenightwearsonlike that.

The demons drink and dance and laugh, the drums pounding well into the night. Shooting stars zip overhead, bright white in the clear winter night. The snow abates, at least, after drifting in light flakes around my head for hours.

At some point in the night, I grow exhausted enough to drift off. I dream of someone telling scary stories by a warm and cozy fire, locked away in one of our little wooden houses in Manistique.

Morning breaks, soft dawn light teasing at my lashes. The next thing I feel is big hands looping beneath my knees and wrapping around my shoulders, then being curled to a hot, hard chest.

I struggle. My hands and feet flail wildly before I’m clamped against my captor’s shoulders, his grip like a vice on my limbs.

“Be still, woman,” he hisses, “lest I toss you into the flames.”

I do as he says, letting him hold me against his chest. And he’s warm and firm and steady as he carries me down the steps of the dais, so I huddle into that warmth as we move away from the bonfire.

He doesn’t seem interested in groping me, at least—though I can’t bring myself to be grateful. Not groping me should be the bare minimum here.

I take in the sight around me to find demons of every gender sleeping around the fire on piles of furs. It looks like some passed out where they stood after their revelry, bundled in warm blankets, while others have moved into the old houses around the town square. I remember coming here as a kid, visiting the year-round, kitschy Christmas shops. It’s familiar enough to confirm that we are, in fact, in Christmas, Michigan.

The Holly King carried me all the way across the Hiawatha National Forest in one night—nearly fifty miles.

We pass down a side street, then through a rickety wooden door. It looks like, at one point, it was pulled off its hinges—maybe when the Infernal Legion first arrived and pushed out the Heavenly Host from the Upper Peninsula. It’s been crudely reassembled, and it’s through that door that the Holly King takes me.

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