He was right.
Dylan took a deep breath and grabbed the handle of the Whip. He lifted it out of the holder and shook it to let the braided lash untangle. The metal tip on it tapped against the ground. Dylan cocked it back over his shoulder and cracked it.
He’d practiced since last year—in secret, feeling like an idiot—but he still wasn’t that good with it. It didn’t matter. The snap of the Whip still made Dylan’s teeth rattle and the reindeer surged forward against their harnesses as one. One of the Saint-blood grabbed one of the reindeer by the bridle. It threw its head up and dragged him off his feet. He hung on grimly.
Dylan hoped he had a good grip. He cracked the Whip a second time. The glittering metal tip of the lash slipped through the seconds and fractured time. It blew out in a slow-motion explosion of moments, a thousand years of today split into wafer-thin slivers.
As the road opened, the reindeer surged forward. Furry split-toed hooves found purchase on the minutes as they labored upward andthroughthe world until they were out the other side. The Sleigh lurched and bounced behind them. The Saint-blood hung on for a second and then let go at the last minute, he rolled back into the mundane world.
“Is this…normal?” Nik asked through gritted teeth as he tightened his grip. “I always imagined it…smoother.”
Dylan dropped the Whip between his feet and untangled the reins into both hands. The Saint-blood who’d come along for the ride hooked his arm through the reindeer’s harness and buried his face against its throat.
“You and me both,” Dylan said through gritted teeth.
“Do you even know where Belling is?” Nik asked. The words were stripped from his lips and thinned out, sped up or slowed down depending on what eddies caught them.
“Bit late to worry about that,” Dylan said. “But don’t worry. They do. They know where everything is.”
And just forfucking oncehe hoped they’d take him straight there instead of jerking him around, crisscrossing the globe to end up one street over from where he’d started.
Chapter Fourteen
Aslap put MerulaDemre on her ass in the town hall. The woman sprawled on the floor for a minute and then pulled herself up. Blood dripped from her split lip and splattered over her tattooed cleavage and unbuttoned white shirt.
“Stay down,” the short older woman who’d put her on the floor in the first place told her. “You forget yourself. Perhaps this will help remind you of your place.”
Demre wiped her mouth on the back of her arm.
“I’ve endured more for our people than this,” she said.
The older woman’s head swiveled so she could glare at Demre. She raised perfectly tweezed eyebrows and smiled thinly.
“Go on,” she said in a dangerously sweet voice. “Remind us what you’ve done for our people…lately.”
Demre got up onto her knees. “This wasn’t my fault!” she protested. “I didn’t bring them here. That fool Lucas caused this, him and his stupid party, andhewasn’t mine.”
Somerset shifted position. It hurt. Someone had given the town forewarning that the Yule Lads were coming. When they’d ridden into town, the Kallikantzaroi had been waiting and had driven a dump truck into them. Somerset had been grabbed before he could extricate himself from the mangled mess of his bike.
Jars had covered for the others so they could scatter. So far they were the only two in chains, but it wouldn’t take long. The whole town was looking for them.
“So what happened?” Somerset asked. “I know Irene had backed out of your deal. She wanted to keep her baby…”
The old woman gave a sour look over her shoulder at the pickup-sized wolf curled up in the back of the hall. Its briar ribs were distended, dry leaves falling from wizened branches, and the two women were still huddled together in its gut.
“It was acontract,” she corrected Somerset. “And what happened was that the wolf was supposed to…impress on her that it was for her own good to hold up her end of that contract. Except when he got there, he couldn’t tell the difference between an office Christmas party and a Yule raiding party and panicked.”
The wolf she was talking about—still mostly human, except for his dry leaf eyes—looked sour at the accusation.
“We want to go back to Winter,” he said. “Not fight your battles with Yule.”
Demre made a furious noise from the ground and yanked in frustration at her hair. “Yule wasn’t there!” she said. “You brought them down on us when you went after Santa!”
“He had the ticket home,” the wolf said. “We needed it.”
The pregnant woman, grubby and tired in torn leggings and matted hair, made a strangled sound at that dispassionate description. She buried her head in Alice’s shoulder, one arm locked around her stomach and the other clutching the other woman close to her. The paramedic looked gray and tired, the bruise on her forehead livid and raised, but she muttered something comforting as she patted the other woman’s shoulder. She pulled herself away and crawled to the front of their cage.
“He needs treatment.” She pointed at Somerset. “He could be bleeding internally—”
