His mother heads toward the desk, presumably to open the panic room.
And Louis’s father steps into the doorway—and directly into the broad, bare chest that has stepped forward to fill the space.
He stumbles back and looks up into the stony face of Krampus staring down at him.
Then the screaming starts.
Chapter
Fourteen
For all of his flaws, Karl Kohler is a brave man. Caught between his family and a hulking monster that has been hunting them for generations, he plants his feet and spreads his arms. Willing to be their shield and their sacrifice.
Theodora, too, surprises me. She’s screaming, high and constant and panicky, but she scrambles toward the desk instead of cowering.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for their son. Louis runs. He doesn’t even glance back to see if I’m following. He staggers toward the back of the room, pawing at the bookshelf there, sending leatherbound books and priceless trinkets crashing to the floorboards.
I watch all of this from the couch, still frozen in my seat, half in shock and half in entertained delight as I watch the chaos play out.
A moment later, Louis’s mother finds the button she’s looking for, and the shelves swing inward with aclick, revealing a hidden passageway. Louis is gone the second he has a chance, sprinting into the darkness. I catch a glimpse of him disappearing downward, his boots echoing on descending metal steps.
I expect his mother to follow. But instead she reaches under the desk and straightens up with a shotgun in her hands. As Krampus slams his birch rods into the side of Karl’s head to send him sprawling to the floor, the barrel of the gun swings toward him.
I shout and lurch across the room toward Theodora. She barely seems to register me—her eyes sliding over me the same way they have all night—as she plants the butt of the gun against her shoulder, squares herself, and fires.
I’m so close to the shot that I canfeelit vibrating through my bones. A high-pitched ringing drowns out all other sounds. I tackle Theodora to the floor, even though in the back of my mind I know it’s too late, I’m too late, the gun has already gone off and Krampus is too large of a target for her to miss. Even as I straddle her torso and pin her to the floor, I know it’s pointless.
What a fucking fool I am. This whole time I’ve lauded the fact that Louis’s mother is underestimating me, but I underestimated her right back.
She slams the butt of her shotgun into my cheekbone as if to drive that point home.
I grunt in pain as my skull rattles. We end up in an awkward tug-of-war with the gun, neither of us strong enough to fully overpower the other. But I’m on top, and I know how to fight dirty. So instead of trying to get the weapon out of her hands, I grab both ends of it and shove it down toward her neck. I press it closer, closer, till it’s flush against the skin of her neck, and then I keep pressing. Her eyes bulge as the gun’s body cuts off her airflow. Her manicured nails scrabble at it, one caught on the trigger.
Then a hand seizes me by the hair and yanks me off of her. Louis’s father stands over me, breathing hard as he stares at me.
“What in God’s name has gotten into you?” he asks. “We’re not the enemy here.”
I twist in his grip, trying to get a look at Krampus, but he doesn’t let me. Yet if he’s here, and Krampus isn’t, then… that gunshot must have taken him down.
My stomach twists. It can’t be real. It can’t be over just like that.
I twist and writhe in Karl’s grip, clawing at him as he continues holding me by the hair. Theodora sits up on the floor, pressing a hand to her neck as she catches her breath. Her other hand still grips the shotgun, and she looks like she’d love to aim it at me.
“She’s hysterical,” Louis’s father says in a tone that brooks no argument. “I suspected she was lying about being caught by Krampus earlier, but I let it slide.”
Louis’s mother glowers at me. She knows better than to excuse a woman’s actions ashysteria, I can see it in her eyes, but she seems reluctant to argue with her husband. Her finger twitches toward the shotgun’s trigger, then draws away as she lets out a reluctant sigh.
“Well, I’m not going to be locked up in the panic room when she’s in a state like this,” she says with a sniff. She struggles to her feet, using the shotgun barrel as a crutch.
I consider grabbing it, but I know it’ll only earn me more pain. I’m on my knees, unarmed and outnumbered. I’ve lost.
“We’ll lock her out here,” Louis’s father says.
“Wonderful idea, dear.”
They share a tender smile while I continue struggling in Karl’s grip. It turns my stomach, the idea that they get to share a heartwarming moment over Krampus’s corpse and my helpless pain. I hate that they’ve won. People like themalwayswin.
When Karl tosses me to the floor, I don’t even try to get up. I just lie there and breathe, face pressed to the cool wood, as I listen to the Kohlers retreat into their panic room. The hidden door shuts closed behind them with a dull click.
