Page 7 of Some Swans Don't Swim
Chapter Two
Irolled over the iceto escape Krampus’s clicking claws, his drooling, snapping jaw, his forked tongue that wriggled dangerously close to my cheek. Swear to god, if he licked me, game over. He was dead. Same if he ate me.
Surging to my feet, I lashed out with my seraph knife, aiming right for his wandering tongue. He dodged. I missed. He swung a claw-tipped arm, and didn’t miss. Mother fucker. I went flying, then crashed to the icy street and slid about half a block away. Good thing I didn’t have any breath to knock from my lungs. Still, no one knocked me down without getting knocked right the fuck back.
He rocketed toward me, fast for someone his size, the ice not impeding him one bit. Once again, I sprang to my feet and raced to meet him for a little hand-to-hand combat.
“Hey, goat breath,” a familiar voice shouted. Jacek. The loud click of a gun’s safety followed.
I allowed myself a fourth of a second to look away from Krampus, toward my three vamps standing outside the house they’d gone inside. At the sight of them, panic coalesced in a tight ball in my gut.
When Krampus swung his head toward them, eyeballing my loves the way I used to with pie, I instantly knew what would happen next, because I would’ve made the same choice. It didn’t matter that Sawyer held a shotgun aimed at Krampus. They were closer to him than I was, three delicious vampires compared to one, all bigger than I was. All meatier.
The choice in entrees was obvious.
Krampus lunged toward them, but I was faster. I sprinted for him, and before he got far, I stomped on one of the jingle bells dragging off the bottom of his cloak, which pulled him up short. Then I jumped onto his slightly stooped back, my seraph knife primed for slicing and dicing. He flailed, attempting to whip me off, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Still, it was hard to stab him when he wouldn’t stop moving.
“Don’t shoot!” I called to Sawyer.
“Definitely not with you on it, Sunshine,” Eddie yelled.
“Where the fuck did Beelzebub go?” Jacek shouted.
Excellent question, one I wished I knew the answer to while I tried to ride a bucking rodeo Krampus. Before I could bury my knife into him, he slammed me down onto the icy street. His claws bit into my neck. I grasped his hand—no, a damn hoof, covered with clawsandbrittle fur—daring him to come a little closer.
“Belle!” Sawyer bellowed.
“Shoot it!” Jacek yelled.
A shot rang out. Krampus didn’t even blink. But he did lean closer, his tongue like a wriggling black worm.
I slashed out with my knife. Greenish, brownish blood splatted all over my face and jacket. Krampus jerked back with a loud, keening wail. I buried my knife into the ice next to me with the force of my swing and found half of Krampus’s tongue attached to the pointy end. I heaved a disgusted groan, and almost all the blood I’d drunk at breakfast.
“Gross!” I stared open-mouthed at Krampus, as if he should be ashamed for making me do something so vile.
He was screaming up a fit and spraying blood all over the place. Then, in a bright blue flash of light, he was gone.
“Well, shit.” I pulled my knife free and held it up toward my vamps. “Krampus tongue, anyone?”
They blurred toward me, their concerned ochre gazes ticking from me to the rest of the street.
“We’re good, thanks,” Jacek said. “Nauseous but good.”
“How are you?” Sawyer leaned down, his perfect lips tugging into a grimace at the goat-demon blood all over me.
“In desperate need of a shower. He didn’t chomp on me, but he didn’t let me catch him either.” I searched the street even though I knew I wouldn’t find him there. “He’s still out there.”
“Yeah, but maybe you stopped him from taking another kid,” Jacek said. “At least for tonight.”
“But I also stopped him from showing us where he’s keeping the kids he’s already kidnapped. Can you hand me Night’s Fall?”
“It’s inside.” Jacek started to turn toward the house and then jerked back. “Hey, who put the upside-down car in the yard?”
“Krampus,” I said. “You didn’t hear it?”
Eddie shook his head. “We didn’t hear a thing, but when you didn’t say anything when I called, we decided to come check things out.”
Krampus had some serious magic, then, to block out the noise he made from those inside their cozy houses. It must’ve not worked on children, though, if they were lured outside by the sound of his jingle bells.
