Page 76 of Never Kiss a Krampus
I turned and ran, not for the safety of the apartment, but for the bucket of salt by the door, the same salt I’d used when I made the summoning circle. I didn’t have time for a ritual. I didn’t have candles or offerings or a desperate prayer whispered into the winter night. I just had a desperate sliver of hope that its power was still tethered to this place. To him.
I cast the salt in a wide uneven circle, my hands shaking, then I grabbed one of the shards of glass and slashed it across the palm. Blood welled, dark and red in the greyness.
“Bastian!” I screamed, my voice raw with fear, slamming my palm down on the circle. “I need you!”
The circle flared, not with a gentle shimmer, but with a blinding, desperate white. It flared once, a silent explosion of pure, defiant light, and the wailing of the shadow creature rose to an agonized shriek. The tendrils of darkness recoiled from the sudden radiance, shrinking back from the force of it.
The light faded, leaving me gasping on the floor, my hand bleeding, my body trembling with the aftershock. The circle sputtered and died, a handful of salt on a dusty floorboard. I wasstill alone. I hadn’t summoned him. I had just sent up a flare. A desperate, bloody beacon in the overwhelming dark.
The darkness writhed, gathering itself, reforming. It was weaker, but it wasn’t gone. And it was angry.
The front door shattered inwards.
Not opened. Shattered. The wood exploded in a shower of splinters as something immense and furious tore through it. Bastian stood in the gaping hole he’d created, in his full untethered power, a being of winter night and righteous fury. The air crackled around him, charged with an ancient, lethal energy. His fur was raised, the muscles in his powerful body bunched and ready to strike. His eyes were not just glowing; they were twin coals of pure, incandescent rage.
CHAPTER 25
Bastian took in the scene in a single, burning glance—me on the floor, my bleeding hand held to my chest; Grinchly, pale and whimpering, pinned by a shadow that was beginning to creep up his leg; the spreading puddle of malevolent magic that was devouring the very color from my shop.
A sound tore from his throat, a roar that was older than mountains, colder than glaciers. It was not a sound of anger. It was the sound of winter’s judgment itself.
He took a step into the shop, and the darkness recoiled from him, not from light, but from a more profound, more primordial cold. He was an alpha predator, and this shadow-thing was a scavenger.
“I told you,” he snarled, his voice a low, lethal rumble that vibrated in my bones. “I told you what would happen if you hurt what is mine.”
He raised a hand, not towards the shadow, but towards Grinchly, who let out a pathetic, sobbing squeak. One of theheavy chains coiled around his chest unhooked itself with a metallic whisper. It snaked through the air, a slithering, predatory arc of dark, gleaming metal, and wrapped around Grinchly’s torso, pinning his arms to his sides. The links didn’t just restrain him; they seemed to absorb what little warmth was left in the man. Grinchly’s teeth started chattering violently.
Grinchly, now securely trussed, was dragged unceremoniously into a corner with a flick of Bastian’s wrist. The chain tightened, holding him fast against the wall, a forgotten, whimpering bundle of expensive wool and abject terror, and Bastian then turned his full attention to the writhing pool of darkness. It pulsed, a black, malevolent heart trying to beat.
“A parasitic construct,” he said, his tone dismissive, analytical. “Crude, but effective. It has fed so long it has grown a will of its own.”
“Can you… can you stop it?” I asked, my voice a thin thread. The fear was a cold, heavy thing in my stomach, but seeing him, so utterly in command, so himself, had pushed back the panic. This was what he was. This was the power he held in check.
“It is not a creature to be stopped,” he mused, walking a slow, deliberate circle around the spreading corruption. “It is a wound. It must be cauterized.”
He stopped opposite me, across the shimmering, dark pool. He looked down at the blood on my palm, then back up to meet my eyes. A jolt passed between us—not magic, but recognition. My blood on the floor had called him. My pain had been the beacon.
“Cover your eyes, little light,” he commanded, his voice gentle but absolute. “And do not look away from the corner.”
I didn’t argue. I scrambled backward, pressing myself against the counter, and buried my face in my arms, squeezing my eyes shut. But I peeked. Just a little. Through the gap between my elbow and my side, I watched.
He didn’t chant. He didn’t gesture dramatically. He simply extended one hand, palm down, over the center of the pool. And from his palm, a single, perfect snowflake began to form. It wasn’t white. It was the color of a star on a crystal-clear winter night—a brilliant, burning blue. It grew, intricate and impossibly complex, a fractal masterpiece of frost and light. It didn’t fall. It hung in the air above the darkness, a tiny sun of absolute zero.
He lowered his hand, and the snowflake drifted down.
It didn’t land with a splash. It touched the surface of the shadow, and the effect was instantaneous and absolute. A soundless scream filled the shop, a pressure against the eardrums that made the air itself feel like it was tearing. The darkness writhed, twisting in on itself as if it were being consumed from the inside out. The vibrant, malevolent energy was instantly drawn towards that single point of impossible cold, that perfect, beautiful, deadly snowflake.
The darkness didn’t just vanish. It was annihilated. Converted. Where the roiling shadow had been, there was now just a spreading patch of perfect, glittering rime frost, delicate and intricate as lace. The water was gone, the glass dust frozen into a thousand sparkling diamonds. The oppressive cold was replaced by the crisp, clean scent of a winter forest after a fresh snow. The sorrowful wailing ceased, leaving a silence so profound it felt like a blessing.
The single snowflake at the center of it all pulsed once with a cold, blue fire, then dissolved into a puff of shimmering motes,like dust motes in a sunbeam, if the sunbeam was made of pure magic.
It was over.
Bastian stood there for a long moment, his chest rising and falling, the only movement in the stillness. The terrifying aura of power receded, settling back into the imposing form I knew, but leaving a residue of raw energy in the air. The primal roar was gone, replaced by the steady rhythm of his breathing.
He turned towards me, and the red fire in his eyes had dimmed, banked to a warm, concerned amber. He crossed the distance between us in three long strides, closing the space I had barely realized was there. He knelt before me, his massive frame blocking out the ruined door and the night beyond.
“Show me,” he commanded, his voice still rough from the power he had wielded, but the command was softened with a gentleness that was solely for me.
