Page 20 of Some Swans Don't Swim
The corner of a cinder block, almost a complete block of ice. Up ahead and behind the trees lay a whole stack of them, one on top of the other. Curious, I marched toward them, and when I neared, the thud of my boots vibrated up through my teeth. The ground here was different. Metallic.
I dropped to my knees and frantically started clearing the snow, then sat back on my heels as I stared down at a door. It was like one of those that led into a tornado shelter, or this was how I imagined those anyway. As soon as I touched the pile of cinder blocks, they sparked blue magic. Goat demon magic, if I had to guess. I flung the cinder blocks aside and then had a heart-to-heart with myself.
This isn’t the trapdoor like the one in the mausoleum back in Podunk City.
Doors are friendly now. I like doors.
What I find underneath won’t whither up my soul.
I snapped the thick lock free and threw it open. Then hurled myself backward with a yelp.
Stone eyes stared up at me out of a swan’s elegant, though huge, face from on top of a set of descending stairs. The seventh swan. Achievement unlocked.
I focused on my vampires’ bites all over me and sent them a message, “Found the swan.”
Maybe the kids, too, because she had to be here for a reason.
Lit multi-colored Christmas lights were wrapped around her bird body, which was odd. Her large wings were spread wide, reaching past the width of the inside of the entrance. I crept closer and slithered underneath one of them, worming my way past enough to see, hardening myself to what I might find.
The Christmas lights draped from the statue behind me and showed me everything.
“Belle!” Eddie shouted from up above.
I couldn’t find my voice to answer because there, clustered at the bottom of the stairs, were six children in coats and hats, all made out of stone. Alive? Dead? I had no idea. My eyes filled with tears.
The Christmas lights draped down from the swan’s wings and wrapped around them, as if in a protective cocoon.
The rings...
I gazed up at her left outstretched wing where a large crack bent it at a weird angle where the ring was.
The rings had turned the swans to stone, but Krampus wanted them alive to love him, so being turned to stone wouldn’t kill them. They were alive. This swan must’ve somehow escaped being turned to stone long enough to protect the kids, and then had turned them into stone so they wouldn’t freeze. She had wrapped the lights around herself and them. It was the same kind of thing as travelling as a group with Night’s Fall—we all had to be touching.
The swans were alive. So were the kids.
Quickly, I unwrapped the lights from around them as Jacek and Eddie clambered down the steps. The stone instantly faded from the kids’ skin and coats, their cheeks turned rosy, and their breaths puffed in the air as they began shrieking and crying.
I forced down a sob of relief and turned back toward the steps.
“You’re going to be okay,” Eddie said soothingly to them behind me. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Let’s take them to the police station,” Jacek said.
Once they’d scooped up three kids each and hightailed it out, I wadded up the Christmas lights and bounded up the stairs.
“You’re a genius, seventh swan,” I croaked out around the lump in my throat. “See you in a few.”
I concentrated on my bites and sent a quick message to Sawyer—“Almost ready for Krampus behind the trees.” Then I sprinted toward the six other swans, risking a glance across the street.
Sawyer and Krampus were leaping off the last building now and landed in the middle of the road, only thirty feet away.
Pausing only long enough to find one end of the Christmas lights, I circled around the statues, twining the lights around their necks, a wing, or a beak. Then, still gripping one end of the lights, I surged into the center of the circle, the six swans and I now touching via the lights.
Footsteps and hoof beats pounded toward me. Close enough that I could read every question in Sawyer’s eyes, see the falling snow piling up around Krampus’s tall horns.
I thrust Night’s Fall into the air and shouted, “To the seventh statue.”
Wings sprouted from the bird-sword. Darkness crushed in, and I was no longer standing in the middle of the statues. I existed in nothing but a black void, crushing the string of Christmas lights in my fist. Then Night’s Fall dropped me into existence again, dead center of all seven statues arranged in an almost perfect circle. Imperfect only because one of them still stood on a set of descending stairs.
