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Epilogue

One Year Later - NIK

It’s Krampusnacht, and I’m home before midnight.

Three hundred years, and I never once made it home before sunrise on the fifth of December. Tonight, I worked through my list with my brothers in four hours flat: a city councilman who’s been stealing from a children’s hospital, a landlord who turns off the heat on his tenants every winter, a man in Oakland who hits his dog. I made every one of them cry, and I enjoyed every fucking second of it. I just enjoy what’s waiting for me at home more.

The Boogeyman laughed at me when I left early. “Look at you,” he said. “Santa’s got a curfew.”

I told him to go back under his bed. He told me to go change a diaper. Then I left him standing in an alley with El Cuco cackling behind him, and I didn’t look back once.

The house is dark and quiet when I come in. I stop at the nursery first, like I always do.

My daughter is asleep in her crib, flat on her back with her arms thrown over her head and her fists curled up next to her ears. Noelle. She’s three months old, and she already has her mama’s mouth and my eyes. When she cries, the lights flicker. When she’s happy, the shadows in her room dance on the walls all by themselves. They’re dancing now, slow and soft, all around her crib.

I lean down and breathe her in. She smells like milk, baby powder, and her mama. I kiss her forehead so lightly she doesn’t even stir. Then I go find my wife.

She’s in our bed, in the middle of her nest. She keeps rebuilding it bigger every month. Tonight, she’s sitting up against a mountain of my sweaters with her hair wrapped in her silk scarf, wearing nothing but one of my shirts, unbuttoned all the way down. Waiting for me.

Finally, she thinks the second I walk in. Took you long enough. Your daughter just ate and went down, and I’ve been sitting here in this shirt for twenty damn minutes.

“Four hours,” I tell her, pulling off my jacket. “That’s a record.”

“For you, maybe.” She smirks. “Was the list long this year?”

“Longer than ever.”

“Anybody I know?”

I think about it. “Tyler.”

Her whole face lights up. “No!”

“He cheated on his new girlfriend with her sister.”

“Oh my God.” She falls back into the nest, laughing. “What did you do to him?”

“One of my brothers asked for that one. Said he had a personal interest.” I climb onto the bed and crawl up her body. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, baby.”

She stops laughing. Her eyes go heavy. Her shirt’s fallen open, and I can see her breasts, so much fuller than they were a year ago, her nipples dark and swollen. A bead of milk sits right on the tip of one of them. I watch it. She watches me watch it.

Oh. Oh, he’s looking at me like…

“Like I’m starving,” I finish for her. “Because I fucking am.”

I lean down and lick the drop off her nipple. She gasps and arches into my mouth. It tastes sweet and warm, so much like her that my cock goes hard so fast it hurts. I close my mouth over her and suck, slow. Milk floods my tongue, and she moans so loud I have to put my hand over her mouth so she doesn’t wake the baby.

“Quiet, Red.”

She nods frantically against my palm. I suck harder.

She’s shaking under me, her thighs pressing together, and I can smell her slick from here, thick, sweet, and getting stronger every second. I move to her other breast and do it all over again, and she grabs my hair with both hands and holds me there like she’ll die if I stop.

Don’t stop, oh my God, don’t stop. Why does this feel so good? Why is this so fucking hot?

“Because you’re mine,” I murmur against her skin. “Because I put my baby in you, and now your body takes care of both of us.”

She whimpers.