The Naughty List (6 page)

“They could be carjackers,” Cora said.

“Then I’ll eat them,” Valerian said matter-of-factly.

Valerian stopped the car and got out. Cora got out as well. She couldn’t trust Valerian not to just eat that poor guy, carjacker or no.

“Help me, please!” It was a woman, Cora now saw. She had a cap on, the hood of her jacket over that, and a woolen scarf was hiding the bottom half of her face, so it had been hard to tell from inside the car. “I need help, please,” the woman said again. “My fiancé is… he was… he, he stopped, because we thought he was in trouble, and then he was gone, but he wasn’t really, he grabbed Tom, and he, he dragged him off, it was all so fast, I tried to follow, but then I couldn’t see them and and…”

Her words were diluted with tears and washed away on the icy wind. Cora put an arm around the woman. “It’s gonna be okay,” she said. “I’m Cora. What’s your name?”

“Jo,” she managed through her sobs. “Jody Phillips.”

“We’ll help you, Jo,” Cora said and looked at Valerian with a look that said,
oh yes, we will.

“Jody, did you get a good look at who took your fiancé?” Valerian asked.

Cora could feel Jo’s trembling body tighten. “He was, he was… wearing a mask, I think. A costume. Shaggy. He reeked.”

“A goat mask and a furry costume, by any chance?” Valerian kept prodding.

Jo nodded. “It seemed so real…”

“Just what I thought,” Valerian said. He pulled Cora to the side so he could speak with her without being overheard. “It’s a krampus. She still has its scent on her.”

“A krampus, like, the Christmas spirit?”

“A krampus like the demon that feasts on human flesh once a year. They like their meat flavored in a certain way though, picky bastards. They take people who have been keeping a secret from someone they love. Philanderers are a favorite of their kind, it’s most likely what inspired the naughty-nice dichotomy that’s been so over used.” Valerian looked from Jo to Cora. “We can pretend we looked for him but didn’t find him, call the cops and leave. She’ll be most likely better off without that Tom.”

Cora met Valerian’s honey pale eyes with her own ice-encrusted stare. “No.” She said it as a word, but somehow, it was more than that. Cora felt a current rush through her, something she had come to recognize as the feel of her magic. It made the word into more than a word, made it into a command, a spell, almost.

Valerian blinked. Then he shrugged. “It’s because you want to set the world right, isn’t it? Even if he is a cheater as I say, you want her to know it and deal with that pain. Because it tastes less bitter than the pain of a dead fiancé? Is that it, a plot straight out of a screwed up romance novel?”

“It’s because I promised,” Cora said. Snow was glazing her hair, and she felt the cold moisture on the skin of her face. The wind and frozen water just seemed to brush past Valerian, though, seemed unable to touch the taotien. Maybe they were just too much like things cut from the same cloth, meshing easily, Cora thought.

“Fine. Jody, dear,” Valerian said, detaching himself from Cora. “My friend here is a private investigator. I’ll help her look around, see what we can find before we call anyone. You just go sit in your car, keep warm, and try to calm down, okay?”

Jo nodded and seemed glad to have someone tell her what to do.

“Hey, I’m not actually a P.I.,” Cora said.

Valerian shrugged. “Like she cares.”

As the car door fell shut behind her, Valerian said, “Krampusses. They always stuff themselves, have no appreciation for savoring a meal.”

“So find him,” Cora said. “You and that amazingly supernatural sense of smell.”

Valerian chuckled. “Would love to. But on the eve before Christmas, a krampus is the strongest thing roaming the wild. On that one night of the year, even I can only find one if it wants to be found. You gotta put a tracing spell on the cheating fiancé, sweet Cora.”

“Huh.” Cora had only learned that she was a witch—or witchling, as Valerian kept calling her—a few months ago. Recognizing and using the magic was still strange, otherworldly. It was a lot like reaching orgasm for the first time and realizing that you’d been a virgin
before,
except magic did not have the same quality of soar and release. It was just power, tasteless power. Or so it felt to Cora.

Can’t do much about it now,
she thought, and reached for the power. It was like orienting her mind in empty space, focusing, and there the magic was. As she touched it, words came to her lips without her conscious mind knowing what it was she said. Suddenly, the winter landscape shifted color. It was normal one second, tinted red and orange the next. She heard her own voice, building to a chant. Slowly, like focusing a microscope, the color condensed and a poppy-colored trail painted itself against the snow, white once more.

“That way,” Cora said, and sprinted after the trail without turning around to see if Valerian was following after her. She just assumed he was.

* * *

Valerian stared at the empty air Cora had left behind when she had vanished. “Fuck,” he said. His fists closed around nothing and his eyes shone cold as the jeweled stars. “You gotta be
fucking
kidding me.”

* * *

Cora was going as fast as the snow allowed. She had been so focused on the thread-fine trail in front of her that she had not dared stop or take her eyes off it, but now there was a feeling of
getting close
that overpowered her senses like the smell of freshly-cut grass.

She slowed, and her surroundings came back into focus. “He’s close,” she said in a whisper. But no one replied.

Cora turned around. She was in the woods, huge tree trunks crowding around her, their invisible canopies woven so tight the dark brown earth was still visible under a sheer dusting of fresh snow. The trees looked foreign, old, mighty, like humans were strangers, rumors of a distant fire.

And she was all alone.

“Valerian?” Cora hissed. She didn’t want to announce her presence to the krampus, who had to be nearby. “Stop fucking around. Where the hell are you?”

She pulled her phone from her pocket but she had no service.
Of course, whenever you really wanna call someone, you can’t.

Cora was alone. Her thudding heart drove that realization home, punch after punch.

* * *

“Fuckfuck
fuck
,” Valerian stomped through the snow.
Stupid witchling with brains made of clouds and common sense as fickle as a falling star. Making me go to the Between just to get you! Selfish to boot, even for you.

He suddenly stopped as he found what he was looking for; a ley line, which under the circumstances would have to do, even though Valerian preferred to start such trips from the comfort of a proper crossroads.

He pulled off his jacket and shirt, dropped them on the snow. For a human, the cold would have been a problem, but a taotien didn’t mind.

He filled his lungs with air, and opened his eyes, all of them, the honey pale ones, but also the taotien eyes that patterned his chest like spots pattern a leopard’s fur. Reality around him shifted, rose and fell, and the Between greeted him like a lamppost might greet a wardrobe-traveling child.

“Cora!” he screamed. His witchling didn’t answer.

* * *

She found the entrance to the cave not ten paces behind the trees to her right. Cora knew that her spell was pulling her there, and she was gonna follow through. She pulled her phone out of her coat pocket once more to use it as a flashlight. The cave entrance soon vanished behind her, and for minutes, there was nothing but blackness ahead, blackness that the little light in her hand seemed barely able to penetrate.

Then, the smell hit her. It was sickly sweet and reminded Cora of bananas she had once left on her kitchen table when she went away on a weekend trip. Her entire apartment had smelled of rot for days after her return.

Next, there was the flickering light of a burning fire, snaking its way around a corner. Cora turned her phone off and moved forward, as quiet as she knew how.

“Ho ho ho!” The voice was eerie, high-pitched, like a hyena almost.
That’s gotta be the krampus
.

She poked her head around the wall of the cave, the increasingly pungent smell making her want to gag.

She could see the krampus, stirring an enormous kettle over a purring fire. “Ho ho ho,” it said again. It was indeed a shaggy-looking creature, covered with fur that reminded Cora of a sloth. Two goat like horns sprouted from its head, pointing up to the cave’s ceiling. To the side was a huge burlap sack, big enough, Cora thought, to fit a person inside.

She had no idea what to do next. She had nothing on her to use as a weapon and no idea what it took to get rid of the krampus. Hell, she didn’t even know if Tom was a) in that sack, and b) still alive. But she also knew she wouldn’t forgive herself if she didn’t find out.

So she did the first thing that came to mind. She took a step forward so the flames licked her with their orange light. “Hey,” she said.

The krampus turned, and Cora refocused her mind like she always did when she reached for her magic, and—nothing. There was nothing there where her magic normally was, it was just… empty, hollow. And to make things worse, she had a krampus staring at her and smiling a smile made of sharp, pointy teeth. Now that he was facing her, Cora could see the krampus was a he, because he was nude. His penis and testicles were swinging freely at his crotch and made him look even more like a wild animal than the coiling horns.

“Ho?” the krampus said. His lips were cherry red, and those pointy teeth glistened yellow. His tongue slid out, like that of a snake, and he sniffed the air, nostrils moving like bellows. “Young witch-meat,” he said. His stench was so strong now, Cora felt sick.

The krampus moved, took a step toward her. “
Sweet
witch,” he said.

That was it. Cora’s lizard brain took over. It made her turn, run, escape. She fumbled with the phone that was still in her hand, but the adrenaline made her clumsy, and she dropped it. In the firelight behind her, she could see the krampus approaching. In front of her, the darkness was absolute, but there was no other way out. She spread her hands in front of her and started running into the dark.

“Ho! Wait, witch-meat, wait!” Cora could hear the krampus at her back, picking up speed. So did she, but the darkness and the cave around her were treacherous. Her right foot caught on a rock and pain shot through her leg, followed by more pain as she fell and broke her fall with her knees, elbows, and arms.

“
Sweet!
” came the krampus-voice again, close, and then she felt his hand on her back, closing around the fabric of her coat. Her own scream was high and desperate, and that shocked and scared her more than anything.

* * *

A cave. Typical.
Valerian had been following Cora’s smell, and this was where it had led him.

Her scream sank into him like an arrow forged from ice. He didn’t growl or roar, just ran as fast as his muscles would let him, which was very. The cave was dark, certainly scary for a human witchling who hadn’t yet mastered witchlight, but a taotien’s eyes were a predator’s eyes. They didn’t mind the darkness, they welcomed it.

Around another bend in the cave, Valerian saw them. Cora was on the floor, face down, fallen or thrown, and the stinking krampus was leaning over her, one hand on her back, the other ready to grip the back of her head, but he never got the chance.

Valerian, who did a lot of wicked things but prided himself of always being in control of himself while he did them, just
lost it
.

He sliced with hands that would have shown tiger-sharp claws if there had been any light in the cave. He tore with a tiger’s precise yet lethal teeth.

The krampus, startled by the sudden attack, nevertheless struck back, trying to gut Valerian with his horns. That strategy only worked until Valerian grabbed both horns, snapped them off at the base with a roar, and rammed them into the krampus’s chest; a quick and certain finale, just as one would expect when any grown tiger has it in his mind to kill a goat.

“Cora!” She was on all fours, crawling away from the noise of tearing and the smell of blood. Valerian shot toward her and swooped her up in his arms.
You are all right, you are all right.
Cora screeched when he first touched her, scared because she couldn’t see in the dark, but she relaxed when she felt his familiar warmth holding her.

“Where were you?” she screamed. “You left me in those woods!”

“I wouldn’t, ever. You magicked yourself to the Between. I followed as fast as I could. I’m here now,” he said.

And without thinking about it, he kissed her like he had never in all his life kissed anyone ever before.

When their lips touched, electricity sliced through him, lightning bright, hitting Valerian with the realization of a strange truth:
Holy fuck, I love you, Cora!
he thought, and the feeling or the thought or the thing in between the two echoed through his body and set his taotien eyes aglow. He felt that glow and the emotion it contained boil over from himself to Cora. It bubbled through her as well, Valerian could feel it and suddenly he had a sense of her body as if it had become an extension of himself.

* * *

What in the…
Cora thought. She had never been so happy. It was a happiness that tugged on her heart, on her very sense of self, almost so much it hurt. Then he kissed her and she felt the strangest thing ever. Just for an instant, she was inside his mind, knew what he knew, felt what he felt. The power with which he loved—
loved!
—her was too much. It brought tears to her eyes, joyful ones, because she realized that she loved him, too. With the faults. With the vanity. With the knowledge that he wasn’t even human.
Nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

Also, he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the taotien eyes that lined his chest were glowing. The glow spread inside her, warm and soft like a blanket of feathers.

“I want you,” she whispered into the darkness. She heard the sound he made in the back of his throat, a tiger’s purring, and in the soft glow of his eyes, he stripped her and she helped him with it, coat, zipper, cardigan, buttons, shirt, bra. Both his hands were on her breasts, kneading them, cupping them, then his fingers woke her nipples to his demanding attention.