Page 12 of Some Swans Don't Swim
I pressed the hilt of Night’s Fall into Jacek’s hand and then unsheathed my seraph knife as I marched forward to protect my vamps, searching our new surroundings for the source of the scream. It was definitely still Wyoming since the air tasted the same. We stood in what looked like a park. A snow-covered jungle gym was up ahead just to the left, and on the right, a line of swings rocked back and forth in the icy wind. No sign of seven swans. No sign of Krampus or anyone screaming.
“Stay behind me, okay?” I glanced back at my vamps, at their tense, alert stances, and then behind them. Gasping, I spun around, and my mouth hung open.
My vampires followed my lead and stared.
“Some swans don’t swim,” I said.
The swans were arranged in a wide circle, a few inches taller than I was and frozen in stone. The spread of their wings and the position of their long, graceful necks were all different, but their expressions were the same. Their empty gray eyes looked too big for their slender faces, and their beaks were open as if they were in the middle of a squawk. They seemed ruffled and terrified. What had happened to them? It looked like someone had turned them into stone while they stood helpless. Buttheywere the ones who were supposed to turn Krampus to stone.
A jingle bell sounded from somewhere nearby, followed by a yelp.
I whirled, holding the seraph knife so hard that my fingernails carved into my palms, and skated my gaze over the park. It appeared empty, except for several dark splotches over the snow about twenty feet away leading behind a couple trees.
“Okay, guys. Assume your positions and let’s get this done,” I said, stepping closer to the weird splotches. The wind carried a coppery scent just then, and my fangs snicked out. Fresh blood. Human.
My vamps took notice of it, too, with a hungry growl.
“Uh, Sunshine...” Eddie started. “We might have a little problem here, aside from the scent of blood.”
Another scream echoed through the night, this one closer and twisted with horror. A little human-shape bounded out from behind the jungle gym’s tornado slide toward the trees where the splotches led to. Krampus followed soon after, barreling after the kid with a jingle-belled roar.
The kid would never make it.
I sprinted forward, the seraph knife slicing through the air at my side as I pumped my arms and legs faster. “Krampus!”
He didn’t slow. Didn’t even turn.
I poured on more speed, my boots barely having time to sink into the snow.
Krampus raised an arm to swipe at the child.
Almost. There. A strangled cry ripped from my throat. I leaped with the seraph knife raised and arced the blade through the air. It whistled and cut through nothing but emptiness.
Krampus had lunged out of the way, right into the direct path of my still leaping body. I crashed into him with an “oomph!”, and both of us plowed headfirst into a tree trunk. The force of the blow rattled my brain against my skull hard enough to see stars. I slumped to the snow in a pile of mine and Krampus’s limbs and brought my hands to my head. Still attached. Not leaking any brain juices or anything. Good enough.
I rose on unsteady feet, only then realizing that Krampus was already gone. Jingle bells rang in the direction of my vampires, but two other noises drowned it out from behind me. A loud creaking and groaning, and the sound of whimpering dread. I turned. The tree that Krampus and I had memorized with our faces was tipping over, its roots stretching upward from the ground like gnarled fingers. And on the other side, underneath it, in the direct path of the tree’s fall, sat a little girl of about six with a blue-striped hat with a pompom on top, desperately pulling at her leg. She was caught in something.
She was also bleeding freely from the gash in her hand.
I accidentally growled, my fangs, my stomach, my preternatural eyesight all homing in on the gushing blood.
She tore her frightened gaze away from the steadily falling tree behind her, looked at me, and screamed.
Shit. I would probably scream, too, if I saw myself right now.
Behind her scream was a bassy shout. Sawyer. Eddie had said something was wrong, and now they had to deal with Krampus.
Without me, I decided. Shit shit shit.
Sheathing my seraph knife, I rushed to plant myself between the little girl and the falling tree. I couldn’t leave her here to fend for herself. My vampires could handle themselves for a little bit. I hoped.
The girl tried to scramble away from me, which only twisted her leg up even more. I couldn’t even tell what she was caught in.
I squatted and took her face in my hands, the brown curls sneaking out of her hat like silk between my fingers, her body heat a shock to my system. “Stop. Please. I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, though I was pretty sure that was a promise to me more than her.
I wasn’t a newborn vampire anymore, but I hadn’t surrounded myself with a lot of bleeding humans lately either. Bloodlust warred with every movement I needed to accomplish before I made it back to my vampires.
One of the tree’s branches snagged the girl’s hat and flopped it against her pudgy cheek. Her big brown eyes filled with tears as she said, “Promise you won’t hurt me?”
