I rush to intercept her. She rounds the corner just as I’m about to, and we collide and fall in a tangle of limbs. She swears at me furiously.
“Anna, go back upstairs!”
“Try telling me what to do one more time, Idareyou,” she snarls. Then she pauses. She stares at me with growing horror, and I realize belatedly that I’m still covered in her husband’s blood.
A dark shadow falls over us. We both pause, and look up to see Krampus looming.
Anna goes very pale. She sees the blood coating his fur. Coatingmyhands. I’m sure she notices, too, that her husband is nowhere to be found.
I slowly climb to my feet, shoulders braced in anticipation of a meltdown. A scream that will bring the rest of the family running, or else send them fleeing to safety. But Anna just seems… frozen. She stays on her knees on the floor, hands curled into fists in her lap, eyes wide. The only movement is the rapid rise and fall of her chest, breasts straining against the confines of her tight dress.
She doesn’t move. Not even as Krampus leans down and takes a deep, audible sniff.
“I remember you,” he says. He slowly circles around her, pausing to scent the air another couple of times. “I remember the smell of your sin. Your silence as I whipped you.”
At first I think Anna is in complete panic mode. But at Krampus’s words, it shifts to a different picture: a woman on her knees in the snow, straight-backed and silent andproud, even in the face of potential death.
And I’m suddenly remembering those raised scars on Anna’s back, and the way she intentionally let me see them. I remember her telling me to run. It wasn’t much of a warning, but it was more than anyone else in this family gave me.
“Let her go,” I blurt out, before I can stop myself.
Both of their eyes dart toward me. It’s almost comical how well their expressions match, both full of affronted fury.
“I don’t need your help,” Anna hisses.
At the same time Krampus says, “You do not command me.”
“She tried to warn me,” I say, heedless of their anger. I step forward, my eyes locked on Krampus. “She tried to help. She doesn’t deserve to die.”
Krampus takes a step toward me, teeth baring in a snarl that renders his face monstrous. “I am the one who decides what you mortals deserve,” he rumbles. “I am the one who weighs your sins and deals your punishment.”
I swallow hard but stand my ground, refusing to back down. If I keep his attention focused on me, then Anna has a chance to run back upstairs. She’ll probably warn the rest of the family about what’s happening and make my plan for the night a whole lot harder. Still, I can’t bring myself to let an innocent woman suffer for my own selfish reasons.
I can see out of the corner of my eye that she slowly lifts herself to her feet. Krampus is facing me, his back to her. She has a chance to go.
But she doesn’t. She stays where she is. And when I falter, Krampus’s shaggy head swings back toward her.
Chapter
Thirteen
Anna lifts her chin, looking Krampus in the eye despite the way he towers over her. Her spine is ramrod straight, uncowed in the face of a monster who has already left her permanently scarred.
“I will take what I deserve,” she whispers.
Krampus nods the slightest bit. He sniffs again, his fingers running over his birch rod, which must have left those marks on her back last year when she joined the family.
“Your husband’s transgressions…” he says slowly.
Anna tenses. I tense, too, watching them. I don’t plan on interfering again, and… maybe Anna does deserve to be punished, if she was complicit in Adrian’s crimes.
But Krampus lowers the rod to his side. “…are not yours to shoulder,” he says.
I stare at him, and then at her. “You didn’t know, did you?”
She blinks, her gaze sliding to me. “That Adrian was an asshole? It was pretty hard to miss.”
“That he was arapist.”
